History of Early Utah Business (2017 Vol.64 No.4)

A History of Earlybusinessutah

2017 volume 64 number 4 Published by the Sons of Utah Pioneers

2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 pioneer features 2 Utah’s Economy in the Nineteenth Century, by James B. Allen 16 Hiram Bradley Clawson: Utah Pioneer Businessman (1826–1912), by Mary Ellen Elggren 24 Hard Work, Planning, and Brilliance: David Eccles, by Thomas G. Alexander 36 Early Jewish Business Owners in Pioneer Utah, by Rochelle Kaplan 49 A Pioneer Mormon Retailer: Edwin D. Woolley 50 Auerbach’s: The People’s Store, by Susan Lofgren 60 Fred J. Kiesel: Frontier Entrepreneur, Investor and Politician, by Bob Folkman 66 Zions 1868–1999,MercantileCooperativeInstitution by Martha Sonntag Bradley 66 Saving ZCMI During the Great Depression, by Frank Madsen departments 1 President’s Message: by John E. Elggren 35 Monuments: The Eccles Legacy 56 Deseret Views: The Auerbach Connection to the Sons of Utah Pioneers 71 Pioneer Vignette: Isaac Smith COVER: The historic 1870 Zions Bank Clock. A diversion from City Creek ran down Main Street driving a water wheel that originally operated the clock until eventually connected to electricity by 1912. Art by Richard Hull WEBSITE: www.sup1847.com NATIONAL SOCIETY OF THE SONS OF UTAH PRESIDENT:PIONEERSJohnE. Elggren PRESIDENT-ELECT: Keith Van Roosendaal PUBLISHER: Dr. William W. Tanner EDITOR-IN-CHIEF & MAGAZINE DESIGNER: Susan EDITORIALLofgrenADVISORY BOARD: Dr. Thomas G. Alexander Robert C. Folkman Dr. F. Charles Graves James C. Hurst, Past President Dr. A. Keith Lawrence Kent V. Lott, Publisher Emeritus Francis A. Madsen Jr. NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS: 3301 East Louise Avenue Salt Lake City, Utah 84109 (801) MISSIONFINANCIAL:WEBSITE:orsubscriptionorEmail:Email:484–4441SUP1847@gmail.comSUBSCRIPTIONS:PatCooknssup3@gmail.comgotothewebsite.Annualcostis$25peryear$45fortwoyears.www.sup1847.comJohnE.ElggrenSTATEMENT:TheMission of the National Society of the Sons of Utah Pioneers is to come to know our fathers and turn our hearts to them; we preserve the memory and heritage of the early pioneers of the Utah Territory and the western U.S.; we honor present-day pioneers worldwide who exemplify the pioneer qualities of character; and teach these same qualities to the youth who will be tomorrow’s pioneers.

THE PIONEER VALUES: We honor the pioneers for their faith in God, devotion to family, loyalty to church and country, hard work and service to others, courage in adversity, personal integrity, and unyielding determination. © 2017 National Society of the Sons of Utah Pioneers® Legacy of David Eccles, page 24.

The

ese In this issue of Pioneer we address

The story of early Utah business is mostly about strong-minded individuals, including the LDS Church leaders who were concerned that non-Mormon businesses might overwhelm less well-financed Mormon retailers. But it must be acknowledged that people from many different backgrounds were important to the early development of Salt Lake City and Utah Territory. Among these are the Catholics who had a great influence on Utah's commercial development. An impressive example is Thomas Kearns, who arrived in Utah as a 21-year-old penniless Catholic youth seeking his fortune in the developing silver mining industry. Tom Kearns started as a mucker, the worst job possible in the mines. After blasting, the muckers—who were considered expendable—were sent into the grit-filled air to start clearing debris. He studied geology at night and learned to read the rock. His determination to get ahead resulted in Kearns and his Catholic partners John Judge and David Keith becoming millionaires from their mining developments in Utah. They generously used their wealth to improve life for all of Utah's citizens by establishing such institutions as Holy Cross Hospital, Judge Memorial School, and St. Anne’s Orphanage, as well as building the Cathedral of the Madeleine. Keith O’Brien’s Department Store, and the Salt Lake Tribune Newspaper were also products of Catholic men and women in Utah. In 1937, Tom Kearn’s widow, Jenny Judge Kearns, donated their spectacular South Temple mansion to the State of Utah for the residence of the Governor. There are many such stories, more than can be covered in a single issue of Pioneer. After working so hard to set a firm foundation for the future of Utah, it must have been a real challenge for the Mormon settlers to accept other groups into what they considered to be their refuge in the mountains. But gradually, and not without difficulty, the gentile outsiders were accepted and became key contributors to the future of Utah. All three of these groups—the Mormons, Catholics, and Jews—had often been rejected and deprived of their rights in the eastern communities of early America. Yet, in Utah Territory, they found a way to co-exist and build a prosperous and cultured capital city that set the standard for the entire territory. All of these amazing people were true Utah pioneers who contributed their best efforts and learned the principles of tolerance and cooperation. In today’s world, this might be considered a miracle.Many of us are descendants of these pioneers, and all of us, including newcomers, continue to benefit from the rich legacy they left us. We in the Sons of Utah Pioneers cherish their values and traditions, no matter their religion. They left a great base for us to build on. We honor them. In 1938 Herbert S. Auerbach of the Auerbach’s Department Store family, though not a Mormon, served as President of The Sons of Utah Pioneers at a time in which his wisdom and generosity were sorely needed. Under his leadership the original Pioneer Village was started in Salt Lake City and he donated his personal Joseph Smith collection to the LDS Church Museum on Temple Square. He did much to preserve Utah’s pioneer history and heritage. The members of the “National Association of the Sons of Utah Pioneers” gratefully maintain this association to strengthen connections with all those who are part of our Utah heritage, and endeavor to educate the youth of today and of future generations about our principlesfounders’andachieveby John E. Elggren Kearns

gentileMormongrowthbeginningstheandofbothandbusinesses in early Utah, including many important contributions by pioneer Jewish settlers. These groups interacted with each other in interesting ways, and found themselves sometimes cooperating as well as competing with each other.

President’s Message I

Thomas

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THE ARRIVAL OF THE FIRST PIONEERS IN THE SALT LAKE VALLEY IN 1847 HER ALDED A VAST IMMIGRATION THAT, OVER THE NEXT HALF-CENTURY, WOULD FILL WHAT IS NOW UTAH WITH NEARLY 277,000 PEOPLE, THE MAJORECONOMY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 1 Utah’S PHOTO TINTING BY SUSAN LOFGREN

by James B. Allen

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Creating a new economy in the isolation of the Great Basin that would eventually accommodate tens of thousands of people was accomplished only by effective planning and cooperative economic activity. It began as soon as the first pioneers arrived when the question of land distribution arose. On July 25, 1847, Brigham Young declared that no one should buy or sell land, but that every man should have land measured to him for both city and farming purposes. Accordingly, Church leaders directed distribution of lots for homes as well as land for farming or trades. Legal titles to land were confirmed after the Federal Land Office opened in Salt Lake City in 1869 and generally validated property holdings established under Church guidelines.

In the words of Leonard Arrington, “Only a high degree of religious devotion and discipline, and superb organization and planning, made survival possible.”2

Initially Church leaders envisioned the establishment of a huge Mormoncontrolled commonwealth covering much of the Intermountain West as well as a major portion of southern California, where the gathering of faithful, begun earlier in Nauvoo, would continue. Though this expansive dream was never achieved, the all-important gathering went on as thousands of American Saints devotedly followed their leaders west, and European converts were encouraged to emigrate to Zion as speedily as possible.

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them came to an unwelcoming desert region because of their devotion to their church and its leaders and their determination to establish the Kingdom of God (interchangeably referred to herein as Saints or Mormons). Rugged mountains, aridity, severe winters, grasshoppers, and crickets presented natural challenges.

Church California.portionasIntermountaineringcommonwealthMormon-controlledenvisionedleadersahugecov-muchoftheWestwellasamajorofSouthern

ORSON

There were also human challenges: learning to cooperate with and understand Native Americans, protecting the Kingdom from antagonistic federal officials, and coexisting with the inevitable influx of non-Mormons (dubbed “gentiles” by the Saints) who were seen as competitors to Mormon economic and political interests.

PRATT’S DEDICATION OF THE SALT LAKE VALLEY BY VALOY EATON

By 1850, Utah’s non-indigenous population had reached 11,380 – a jump of 90 percent in only a year. A decade later it was more than 40,200, and by the end of the century it had grown to nearly 277,000. Creating an economy capable of absorbing this massive in-migration required skilled workers and careful coordination. Church leaders called upon those directing emigration from Europe to emphasize sending mechanics, artisans, and workers with specific kinds of skills that matched pressing needs in Utah settlements.

The first few years were especially difficult as the settlers were plagued by short food supplies, insects, and livestock destroying predators at the same time that thousands of new immigrants were pouring in. However, their cooperative efforts lay the foundation for success. The 1847 pioneers were quickly organized for public labor. They built a fort, put up a fence for livestock, and planted some 872 acres of winter wheat. Water rights for irrigation as well as timber rights were placed under community, rather than private, control.

By 1877, the year Brigham Young died, 295 communities had been founded in what is now Utah, and by the end of the century the total reached 369, although 44 of these were eventually abandoned. Many settlements were planned, organized, and directed by Church leaders. Once a general location had been decided upon, a colonizing company would be organized, some of the faithful would be called by Church leaders to colonize it, leaders would be appointed, and the settlement process would begin. Other settlements were founded by people who simply wanted to move out of the established towns.3

A Public Works Department, established in 1850, pursued a variety of public projects, with workers donating their time as “tithing labor.” Private projects, including larger homes, provided some paid employment. A number of enterprises— including gristmills, sawmills, a tannery, and a foundry—had both public and private owners. To meet the need for an acceptable currency, Church leaders tried during the early 1850s to manufacture coins from the gold dust coming in from California. After that experiment failed, paper money, EDWIN DEAKIN,

Almost immediately after Salt Lake City was established, immigrants began to colonize surrounding areas and establish new towns.

backed by gold reserves, was printed and circulated.Theyears 1849 and 1850 brought a welcome economic boon from an unexpected source: the California Gold Rush. As 40,000 to 50,000 gold seekers passed through Salt Lake City they purchased food and supplies from the Saints at inflated prices and hired the labor of blacksmiths, teamsters, and other service providers. In addition, many emigrants— wanting to lighten their wagon loads—abandoned a variety of goods and possessions along the way which Mormon gleaning parties soon gathered. Merchant companies hauling goods overland to California from the east sometimes learned that ships carrying the same goods had beaten them to their destination, and they opted to sell their goods to the Mormons at devalued prices.

CHURCH HISTORY MUSEUM

THE OLD MILL, SLC, BY

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gold seekers providers.andsmiths,theSaintssupplieschasedCity—theythroughpassedSaltLakepur-foodandfromtheandhiredlaborofblack-teamsters,otherservice

In order to bring the immigrants to Utah, Church leaders instituted the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company (PEF) in 1849. Financed by the Church as well as by private contributions, loans were extended to emigrants who could not afford the passage. Such loans were expected to be repaid once recipients found work in Utah. A network of agents in England and the United States assisted in determining which emigrants would receive help, organizing emigrating companies, chartering ships, and arranging for overland passage to Utah once they arrived on the American east coast. Though many immigrants repaid their loans as expected, many others did not, and by1880 indebtedness to the fund had reached an estimated $1,604,000, including interest. However, since 1880 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Church’s founding, Church leaders celebrated it much like the traditional Jewish Jubilee Year and cancelled half the debt. The PEF was dissolved by the 1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act, but before its demise the fund had provided direct assistance to between forty and fifty thousand people and tens of thousands more were assisted indirectly. In the early years people traveled between Utah settlements on rough wagon roads connecting the ever-growing number of communities, but they were improved little beyond the necessary clearing of trees, brush, and rocks. Communication between Salt Lake City and outlying towns was facilitated by private mail services, frequent visits by Church authorities, and through the Deseret News. More rapid communication became possible in 1861 when the transcontinental telegraph reached Utah. By 1866 the Church-owned Deseret Telegraph Company operated a 500-mile northsouthWaterline. was critical for the development of an agricultural economy, and so most early Utah communities were deliberately established along streams flowing out of nearby canyons, making irrigation practical. Canals were usually constructed as cooperative projects. The Saints believed that water belonged to the public, and when disputes came they were settled by county courts, usually presided over by local Church leaders. County courts also had the During 1849–1850 over 40,000

8 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER often extended credit to local members and kept track of surplus contributions as if they were savings, thus providing a kind of local banking service.

Traditional stores began to find their way into Utah during the Gold Rush when some merchants originally headed for California stayed, at least temporarily, in Salt Lake City. Two non-LDS merchandising firms were more permanently established in 1849: Holladay & Warner and Livingston & Kinkead. The latter brought $20,000 worth of merchandise into Salt Lake City that year and set up business in an adobe house owned by prominent Mormon John Pack. Later, when US military forces established Camp Floyd in 1857 and Fort Douglas in 1862, new commercial opportunities arose for both LDS and non-LDS merchants. In 1866, concerned that competition from gentile merchants was undercutting the business of LDS store owners, Brigham Young urged the Saints to buy only from businesses owned by the Church or its members. While Brigham himself soon sanctioned exceptions, and while the boycott was only somewhat successful in meeting its objectives, it remained generally in force until it was lifted by President John Taylor in 1882. In the mid-1860s Brigham Young urged Utah communities to found cooperatives to manufacture goods for their own populations and to avoid trading with outsiders. Accordingly, many communities developed cooperative enterprises such as dairy and livestock farms, sawmills, tanneries, hat factories, broom factories, and tin shops. The best-known power to assign and approve mill sites and to control access to timber resources in the canyons. Rights to build access roads were granted to individuals, who were also allowed to charge reasonable tolls. There was little development of mineral resources in the early years as Church leaders discouraged prospecting for precious metals. However, they were anxious to extract more practical minerals. While efforts to mine iron near Cedar City in the 1850s proved impractical, successful coal mines were opened in the 1850s and 1860s in Coalville and Wales. In 1862, during the American Civil War, troops under Patrick E. Connor were assigned to Utah. In an effort to undermine Mormon influence Connor and a few non-LDS businessmen encouraged the troops to prospect for silver and gold. Successful mines were opened in the Bingham area by 1865. After the railroad arrived in 1869, mineral and coal production increased dramatically, and Utah’s economy would never be the same. For the most part, everyday commerce in early Utah was conducted either by barter or through the tithing house. Each community had its own tithing house. Since tithes were more often than not paid in “kind,” the tithing house functioned like a general store where a wide variety of goods were taken in and redistributed. People working on Church projects were paid in “tithing scrip” redeemable for goods in the tithing store. Surpluses were gathered into the General Tithing House in Salt Lake City. Tithing houses

9PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 of these was Brigham City, which became almost self-sufficient after its cooperative was founded in 1864. However, such cooperatives had mostly disappeared by the end of theZion’scentury.Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI), founded in October 1868, was a commercial institution closely tied in spirit and purpose to the community cooperatives, and it was much more effective than the boycott in stabilizing the LDS economy and establishing effective competition with non-Mormon businesses. This program of cooperative buying and selling began operations in April 1869 after the parent company in Salt Lake City acquired the inventories of prominent LDS merchants in exchange for cash or stock. Most notable among these merchants were William H. Hooper and William Jennings, both of whom became officers of the new cooperative. ZCMI stock sold widely, though the Church itself was the major stockholder. Branch retail stores, which purchased goods from the parent company, were set up in nearly every community and, enjoying the advantage of cheaper prices, soon absorbed the businesses of local LDS storekeepers. ZCMI and its local cooperatives also expanded into other cooperative manufacturing and agricultural activities. ZCMI was a long-range financial success, though it ran into serious difficulty during the financial panic of 1873. Several non-Mormon merchants continued to operate but ZCMI remained the leading retail outlet in the territory throughout the century. However, the majority of its stock eventually fell into fewer and fewer hands and the various stores became less like cooperatives and more like individual enterprises. In 1882—in conjunction with his lifting of the “gentile boycott”— President John Taylor cancelled Church support of the local ZCMI cooperatives, and the next two decades saw increasing competition from gentile establishments.4 Among Utah’s most successful nonLDS merchants were the Walker brothers, Samuel, Joseph, David, and Matthew. Their family business began with a store at Camp The tithing house functioned like a general store as goods of all kinds were taken in and ingforscrip”wereonPeopleredistributed.workingchurchprojectspaidin“tithingredeemablegoodsinthetith-store. PROVE ME NOW HEREWITH BY GLEN S. HOPKINSON

Deseret NationalBank

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Non-Mormon businessmen and women made enormously important contributions to the early economy of Utah. Some of these, like the Jewish immigrants Frederick and Samuel Auerbach, are discussed in other articles in this issue of Pioneer. Others, like Ben Holladay, whose stage line connected Salt Lake City to points east and west, or Henry Wells and William G. Fargo, who purchased Holladay’s lines in 1866 and established interstate banking throughout the West, were important pioneers in Utah’s financial development—even though they did not reside in Utah. The Miners National Bank of Commerce of Salt Lake City was founded in 1866 by non-LDS shareholders. It was later absorbed by the First National Bank of Utah which in turn went defunct during the Panic of 1873.

H. Hooper and Horace S. Eldredge. They also founded banks in Ogden and Provo. In 1873 Zion’s Savings Bank & Trust Company was founded as a sister institution, taking over the savings department of Deseret National Bank. By the end of the century, Zions Bank had loaned money to a broad variety of Utah enterprises—canal companies, railroads, power companies, real estate developers, salt and sugar companies, and even the Church. Indeed, the demand for banking services proliferated in the last part of the century, partly the result of Utah’s booming mining industry and partly because of the mechanization of agriculture. Fifty new Utah banks were established between 1880 and 1900, though most did not survive. In their effort to build a self-sufficient Utah economy, Church leaders hoped to stimulate local manufacturing throughout Mormon settlements. One successful Salt Lake City enterprise was paper manufacturing, conducted in a Church-owned mill from 1853 until 1868 and then by the Deseret News until 1883. Attempts to produce sugar during the 1850s were not nearly as successful, marked by unpalatable production and beet crop failures. In the short run, molasses produced from sorghum cane replaced sugar as a satisfactory sweetener; by the 1890s, sugar production from sugar beets had become profitable at a factory in Lehi. In 1863 the Church opened a textile factory near Salt Floyd. Then, after purchasing large amounts of government stores at ridiculously low prices when the camp closed in 1861, they established a store and bank in Salt Lake City. Their company eventually would become one of the largest financial institutions in the Intermountain West. Though they were apostates from the Church, the Walkers were respected by many of the Saints who continued to do business with them even during the “gentile boycott.”

The first Mormon-owned bank in the territory was the Deseret National Bank, established in 1871 by William William H. Hooper Horace S. Eldredge

The “Cotton

A significant development was the rise of Utah’s livestock industry during the last third of the nineteenth century. In the 1870s Utah cattle ranchers had begun exporting cattle to nearly all the nearby states. Utah’s dairy industry was also flourished, with milk processing and cheese-making plants in communities stretching from the Utah-Idaho border south to Parowan. By 1895 Utah cattle numbered approximately 365,600, an increase of 156,000 in ten years.5 The sheep industry also skyrocketed, boasting a million head by 1885 and 3,818,000 by the end of the century.6

VOLUME 64 Lake City, but at the time the local sheep industry could not produce enough wool to supply it. The mill’s machinery was sent south to Washington, where a new mill was built to process the cotton produced in St. George. It operated at a profit until 1904. Meanwhile, the most successful of Utah’s various manufacturing efforts was the Provo Cooperative Woolen Factory, which began operation in 1872 and, at times, employed nearly 200 workers. Other local manufacturing firms in the territory included flour mills, sawmills, planing mills, brickyards, charcoal and coke mills, wineries, and Agriculture,breweries.whether sponsored by the Church or pursued privately, was the dominant Utah industry throughout the nineteenth century. At heart, each settlement in Utah was a farming community where farmers irrigated the land and raised hay, grain, and food for themselves or for sale or export. The Bear River Valley irrigation project, completed in 1890, opened 150,000 acres of new farm land in northern Utah. Dry farming began in Davis County in the 1860s, and before the end of the century farmers in several other northern counties had successfully adopted it. The fruit industry also flourished, especially in Box Elder, Weber, Davis, and Utah counties.

See Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 (1958), 216. From 1868–1869, the Washington Cotton Mill was the largest producing cotton factory west of the Mississippi.

The transcontinental railroad, completed when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific met at Utah’s Promontory Summit in 1869, brought about the most significant economic change in nineteenthcentury America. Now consumer goods, mail, and passengers could go from coast to coast and eventually to all parts of the West in hours or days instead of Mission” in

the tion.”Mormonindependenceroleillustrationthecoloniessouthernprovidedmost“strikingoftheofeconomicincoloniza-

OLD

COTTON FACTORY BY ROLAND LEE

12 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER mining areas and facilitated new mine openings east of Salt Lake City and in the Oquirrh Mountains on the west. The Horn Silver Mine, which opened near Milford in 1875, became a rich silver producer. The Silver Reef district—about fifteen miles northeast of St. George—produced nearly $8 million worth of silver-lead ore from 1875 to 1909. The largest mine in the territory was the Ontario mine, near Park City, which yielded almost $14 million in dividends from 1877 to 1904. Other primary mining areas were the Bingham (West Mountain) area and the Tintic district, about eighty-five miles due south of Salt Lake. Wealth from Utah’s mines produced some of Utah’s first millionaires and helped change Salt Lake City’s economic base. Brigham Street (now South Temple) became lined with palatial mansions. While gentiles dominated Utah’s mining world, the Mormons did not stay away completely, especially as the nineteenth century waned. One LDS financier, Jesse Knight, opened Tintic’s Humbug Mine in 1896 and eventually joined Utah’s other millionaires and philanthropists.SaltLakeCity changed dramatically after 1869. It moved from a rural atmosphere and became a bustling metropolitan community, in which Mormon/gentile conflict was subsiding, and it appeared more like major cities in the rest of the nation. Between 1869 and 1900 the city’s population rose from about 25,000 to 84,600. In 1869 nearly 90 percent of the residents were LDS, but by 1900 only half of them were. At the turn of the twentieth century the city boasted thirteen general stores, twenty dry goods stores, forty-one grocers, two breweries, three saloons, two banks, seven hotels, a few other miscellaneous businesses, and even a red-light weeks or months. Equally important, the cost of transportation for goods and passengers declined sharply. Church leaders worried that the railroad would lead to prices that would undercut agriculture and other local industries, leaving many Latter-day Saints unemployed. Some leaders also feared the arrival and expansion of rail service would stimulate more mining, bringing unwanted “outside” influences to the territory. Nevertheless, Brigham Young welcomed the inevitable, partly because the railroad would make it easier, less expensive, and safer to bring converts across the continent, and partly because it would encourage economic activity conducive to better conditions throughout Utah’s settlements. Thus, he negotiated contracts with both Union Pacific and Central Pacific to construct rail lines within the Territory of Utah. Predictably, Mormon men comprised the majority of laborers employed within the territory. However, both Union Pacific and Central Pacific reneged on a major share of their contracts, leaving subcontractors and workers unpaid. The Church struggled to make up the shortfall through sales of Utah Central Railroad stocks and bonds, through tithing credit, and eventually from the sale of Utah Central Railroad to Union Pacific in 1878.

Aconnecting network of Church-supported railroads soon appeared within Utah. Most northern and north-central and some southern communities were brought within a short distance of rail transportation and linked into the national transportation system through the Utah Central, Utah Southern, and Utah Northern lines. The railroad was a boon to Utah’s gentile-dominated mining industry as it provided cheap freighting to and from

SALT LAKE VALLEY BY JAMES T. HARWOOD

13VOLUME 64 NO 4 district. A wastheanticipateddistrict,businessnotbyfounders,emerging.An electric streetcar system was established in 1889, and after 1890 Main Street boasted electric street lights. About this same time, a gas company also began operations. New subdivisions opened frequently during the 1880s, and by 1896 the city’s real estate businesses, which did not exist before 1874, numbered sixty-eight. The city had full-time police and fire departments as well as two hospitals and several benevolent societies.7AsBrigham Young looked at Utah’s increasing secularization in the 1870s he made a final effort to fight it: a voluntary cooperative program known as the United Order, based on communal ideals preached among the Saints in the 1830s. He organized the first United Order in St. George in the winter of 1873-74. Governed by a local elected board, the Order required members to consecrate their property in return for equivalent stock in the Order. Members also pledged not to stope importing goods, to trade only with Order members, and to follow a list of rules for Christian living. Nearly three hundred people joined this first branch of the order by being rebaptized.

Eventually about 150 orders were created throughout Utah. Most were similar to the Order in St. George, but few lasted more than a year. The St. George Order was comparatively long-lived, ending in 1878.

Brigham City was the model for a second type of United Order, based on community ownership of various enterprises rather than consecration of property. The Brigham City Order continued untilSalt1885.Lake City, Ogden, Provo, and Logan were the largest cities in the state and accommodated a third variant of the United Order. A cooperative was organized in The railroad was a boon to Utah’s dominatedgentile-miningindustryasitprovidedcheapfreightingtoandfromminingareasandfacilitat-ednewmineopen-ingseastofSaltLakeCityandintheOquirrhMountainsonthewest.

In the 1890s the flow of immigrants declined as the Church began to change its policy on gathering to Zion. As Utah’s population continued to grow economic opportunities for immigrants were increasingly limited. By the end of the decade Church leaders were telling the Saints that coming to Utah would not help new LDS converts economically and that they should remain in their own communities, whether within the United States or abroad, and build up Zion there. each ward with the expectation that all ward members would help finance it. Logan’s cooperatives included a foundry, a machine shop, a woodworking shop, and a dairy. These ward co-ops also generally did not last beyond the mid-1880s. Some small communities attempted a fourth variant of the United Order where only members of the Order could live in the community. Participants donated all their property to the community, ate together as a family, and shared equally in what the community produced. Orderville, founded in 1875, was the most famous of these. Though not all the economic goals of the United Order were achieved, for a time imports from outside the territory declined, local production rose, local resources were developed more rapidly as local production rose, and “Order” Saints maintained a degree of economic independence from the eastern United States. In addition, by furnishing both labor and materials, the Orders made significant contributions to the temples being built in St. George, Logan, Manti, and Salt Lake City. Brigham Young’s successor, John Taylor, took a different approach through his support of Zion’s Central Board of Trade. The Board ceased to function by the late 1880s but it was significant in that it did not push the communal goals of earlier programs. Rather, it accepted the principles of free enterprise and capitalism, moving Utah further on its way toward becoming part of the larger American system.

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Never truly as self-sufficient as Brigham Young had hoped, Utah would become what some historians have called a “dependent commonwealth.”8

The economic depression of the 1890s, including the socalled “Panic of 1893,” had dire consequences in Utah. Manufacturing declined, businesses failed, and unemployment rose alarmingly. Church leaders did what they could to help stimulate the economy, even allowing the Church to go into debt to complete the Salt Lake Temple and to fund such public works projects as the Saltair Pavilion, the Saltair Railway Company, and the Utah Sugar Company—thereby providing needed jobs. The genius of Heber J. Grant, an LDS businessman who was also a member of the Quorum of the Twelve, helped stave off an even greater collapse. His work with eastern banks was instrumental in keeping Zion’s Bank and the State Bank of Utah alive.9

1 The late Leonard J. Arrington is the most noted historian of the Mormon/ Utah economy in the nineteenth century.

6 Charles S. Peterson, “Livestock Industry,” Utah History Encyclopedia 333.

2 Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom 38.

4 For an interesting update on the problems faced by ZCMI see Larry King, “Analyzing the Success of ZCMI in Pioneer Utah,” in Journal of Mormon History 43:4 (October 2017), 68-99.

7 John S. McCormick, “Salt Lake City,” Utah History Encyclopedia 481; Thomas G. Alexander and James B. Allen, Mormons and Gentiles: A History of Salt Lake City (1984), chs. 1-4.

8 Leonard J. Arrington and Thomas G. Alexander, A Dependent Commonwealth: Utah’s Economy from Statehood to the Great Depression (1974).

9 Ronald W. Walker, “The Panic of 1893,” Utah History Encyclopedia 413-14.

10 Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom 411. Arrington’s population estimate is incorrect; census records show a 1900 Utah population of 276,779.

UtahWhenbecametheforty-fifthstatein1896,nearlyfiftyyearsafterthefirstMormonpioneerssettledthere, it was quite different from the autonomous cooperative society functioning prosperously under church leadership that its founders envisioned. Rather, it was a capitalistic state whose leaders had generally adopted the same economic perspectives as other Americans. And yet, as Leonard Arrington has observed, “Even without attaining their goals . . . the Mormons could show two solid accomplishments. By the end of the century they had provided the basis of support for half a million people in an area long and widely regarded as uninhabitable. And Mormon agriculture and industry, stimulated by an activist Church, supplied the burgeoning economies of Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and Nevada—not to mention the construction gangs of the transcontinental railroads and telegraph lines—with a veritable lifeline of flour, beef, fruits, and other goods and services.”10Gentiles,too, had made important contributions to Utah’s economy by developing a viable mining industry and leading out in the growth of Utah merchandising. At the turn of the twentieth century the antagonism between Mormons and gentiles was lessening, and as the new century progressed they would work together to strengthen Utah’s economy. Utah was becoming more wellintegrated with the broader American system and a full-fledged American commonwealth.

In 1869 nearly 90 percent of the residents of Salt Lake City were LDS, but by 1900 only half of them were. At the turn of the twentieth century the city boasted thirteen general stores, twenty dry goods stores, grocers,forty-onetwobrewer-ies,threesaloons,twobanks,andsevenhotels.

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3 Leonard J. Arrington, “Colonization of Utah,” Utah History Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Kent Powell, 106-8 (1994); Milton R. Hunter, Brigham Young the Colonizer (1940).

5 Donald D. Walker, “The Cattle Industry of Utah, 1850-1900: An Historical Profile,” Utah Historical Quarterly 32 (Summer 1964): 182-97.

I have drawn heavily from his book Great Basin Kingdom and from some of the work of Dean May. See Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints 1830-1900 (1958); Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean May, Building the City of God: Community & Cooperation Among the Mormons (1976); Dean L. May, “Economic Beginnings,” Utah’s History, ed Richard D. Poll, Thomas G. Alexander, Eugene E. Campbell, and David E. Miller (1978),193215; Dean L. May, “Towards a Dependent Commonwealth,” Utah’s History 217-41; Thomas G. Alexander, “Integration into the National Economy, 1896-1920,” Utah’s History 429-46.

ART BY AL ROUNDS16 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER by mary ellen elggren Utah HIRAM BRADLEY CLAWSON Pioneer(1826–1912)Businessman

PIONEER VOLUME 64 NO 4 Hiram Bradley Clawson is an outstanding example of the early Mormon pioneers who crossed America’s central plains and Rocky Mountains to settle in Utah’s largely uninhabited high deserts. A thousand miles from civilization, they initially lived in tents or in their wagon beds and survived on the supplies they had brought with them. It took people with special skills and character to succeed in those circumstances. Hiram Clawson was born in November 1826 in Utica, New York, the oldest of four children. He was fortunate to receive a basic education at the Utica Academy. He learned the valuable trade of masonry from his uncle, Enoch Reese, along with the skills of whip and rope making from his fun-loving if sometimes absent father, Zephaniah Clawson, a riverboat captain. Several weeks following Zephaniah’s September 1841 death in an apparent steamboat accident, Hiram’s widowed mother, Catherine Reese Clawson, and her older children joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; Hiram was baptized two days before his fifteenth birthday. Rejected by family and friends, Catherine took her young children by wagon to join the Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois. Hiram drove the team. With the encouragement of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Nauvoo very quickly developed a highly cultured society that featured theater, musical groups, and even a debate society. Hiram applied for membership in the latter, and although Joseph himself was his advocate, he was rejected as too young. Clever at mimicry and gifted at memorization, Hiram loved to recite and entertain. The Prophet introduced the boy to the accomplished actor, Thomas A. Lyne, who was largely responsible for the remarkable theatricals being presented in Nauvoo. The boy took the only position offered: stagehand/property man’s assistant. His first job was to climb up into the fly of the backstage and throw down fire from heaven. Soon he was on stage as an actor, traveling with the company up and down the Mississippi. He learned all the rudiments of theatrical management and stagecraft, skills that would later prove invaluable to the development of Utah culture. Hiram was endowed in the Nauvoo temple in 1846 before fleeing with the Saints into the unknown West. He was present in Kanesville, Iowa, when Brigham Young was sustained as the second president of the LDS Church. Also in Iowa Hiram’s younger brother, John, joined the Mormon Battalion, and Hiram took charge of getting his mother and sisters to Utah, traveling in Young’s 1848 company. Arriving in the Valley at age twenty-two, Hiram found that his education, talents, and work ethic were in great demand in the barren desert surrounding the Great Salt Lake. The original Eagle Gate was designed by Truman O. Angell, the architect who designed the Salt Lake Temple, and Hiram B. Clawson. The original eagle, carved by Ralph Ramsay and William Spring, had 16-foot-wide outstretched wings and rested on curved wooden arches with 9-foot-high cobblestone pillars as their anchor. The eagle sat on a beehive and a star mount. (See Marc Haddock,“Historic Eagle Gate a prominent Salt Lake landmark,” Deseret News, online).

In August 1852 a talented and well-known actress, Margaret Gay Judd, became Hiram’s second wife. While Ellen and Margaret were of the opinion that two wives sufficiently fulfilled Hiram’s obligations to the principle of plural marriage, Church Authorities expressed a different opinion. Hiram married Alice Young, daughter of Brigham and Mary Ann Angell Young, in October 1856. In early November, Ellen wrote: “Just ten days ago, Hiram brought home a new wife, no more or less than Miss Alice Young, the governor’s daughter. Our house is all in confusion being remodeled to make room for her.” Some weeks later she wrote, “Hiram is kinder than ever, if possible, to us … , and I do know one thing certain, there never was a better husband in this world.”

That same year, at the age of twenty-four and as a colonel in the Utah Militia, Hiram learned diplomacy and negotiating skills during the Central Utah Indian War. He Salt Lake City Council House, ca 1850.

From April 1856 through June 1857, Hiram served as acting architect of the Salt Lake Temple while chief While living in the fort during his first winter in the valley, Hiram taught writing classes and lifted morale with his skills as an entertainer. A close bond developed between him and Brigham Young, who soon employed young Hiram as his personal secretary. Over the years, Hiram became responsible for managing all of President Young’s personal and business affairs. Theirs was a relationship of trust and love, enduring to the end of Young’s life.

It is said that, following the Saints’ 1847 arrival in the Valley, Brigham got on his knees and asked the Lord for ten years of isolation to “sink our roots so deeply into this valley that we will not be driven from this place.” During those precious years of isolation, gifted and hard-working people like Hiram Clawson were essential to the community’sBysurvival.1850,Hiram’s masonry skills had been employed. Brigham Young placed him in charge of the masonry work on the first council house, and he innovated by adding a small adobe building as an office. It was the first adobe structure in the valley. Since trees fit for use in construction were inconveniently located high in the canyons and mountains east of the Salt Lake Valley, adobe became an important and widely used alternative.

18 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER also took on the duties of a husband, falling in love with and marrying Ellen Curtis Spencer, daughter of Orson Spencer, in October 1850. Soon cultural enhancements began to develop in Salt Lake City. Reminiscent of the days in Nauvoo, Hiram and others formed the Deseret Musical and Drama Association, and their first play, Robert Macaire, was performed to sellout crowds in the Temple block’s Bowery during the late summer of 1850. The orchestra was directed by Captain William Pitt. Theater-going became such an important part of life in the new city that performances soon needed better accommodations. During the winter of early 1852, Hiram was a major contributor to the design and construction of the Social Hall on the east side of State Street. Following the Hall’s completion later that year, Hiram became its manager and acted in many theatricals there. As the social center of the city, the Social Hall was also the site of orchestra performances, band concerts, and dances. Often playing to standing-room-only crowds, the Hall soon proved to be too small for the needs of the rapidly expanding city. For several years, however, there were insufficient resources to build a larger facility.

NO 4 architect Truman O. Angell was, at Brigham’s direction, serving an architectural mission to Europe. The architectural demands placed on Truman and Hiram were more than they could have dreamed, but the Salt Lake Temple would yet rise in the wilderness as a wonder of the world. In 1857 the lives of all living in Salt Lake City were disrupted by news of the approaching Federal Army and of the federally appointed territorial governor it would help install. To ensure a peaceful transition of power, Brigham prepared wisely, requesting the Saints to temporarily move southward from Salt Lake to the homes of friends or families in Utah County or elsewhere. Hiram personally oversaw the removal of his family and other families of Brigham Young to safe locations in Provo. His family, numbering thirteen, was sheltered in a board shanty, where they lived for nearly a year in two small rooms. Meanwhile, Hiram was called into service with the Utah Militia as one of the commanders over brave young militiamen who successfully prevented the US Army from entering the Valley until Brigham Young could complete necessary removal preparations. Hiram served in Echo Canyon and on the Weber River, writing tender letters home to ask that he be remembered with kisses to each precious child. Under a negotiated agreement, the army finally entered the empty city in late June 1858. Given the potential for conflicts if the troops were stationed within the city, and recognizing the complete lack of forage around Salt Lake City for the army’s animals, the troops were obliged to march on to Cedar Valley many miles to the southwest, where they set up Camp Floyd. A reporter for the New York Herald observed, “Thus was ended the ‘Mormon war,’ which . . . may be thus historisized: — Killed, none; wounded, none; fooled, everybody.”1 As tensions gradually eased, Hiram and others brought their families back to the city, and routine life was soon restored. “The Social Hall, a very modest forty feet by sixty feet, could seat only about three hundred patrons, though up to four hundred people were sometimes squeezed into the building. . . . Participant changing rooms were located underneath the performance floor. The Social Hall served as a center of pioneer social activity from 1852 until 1857, when the threatened invasion of the United States Army interrupted its use during the so-called ‘Utah War.’” (See Kenneth L. Alford and Robert C. Freeman, “The Salt Lake Theatre: Brigham’s Playhouse,” in Salt Lake City: The Place Which God Prepared).

SOCIAL HALL ART BY CORNELIUS SALISBURY

Over the years, as Brigham’s private road became State Street, the gate was enlarged. Eventually demolished in 1960, the gate was replaced in 1963 with an eaglecrowned bronze span memorializing the gate that had become a landmark and icon of Salt Lake City.

Young sent Hiram to the sale with $4,000 in gold. Hiram was cordially received, purchasing lumber, nails, glass, and other building materials, together with many fine furnishings from the camp’s theater. He also purchased tents, cook stoves, sugar, and other commodities—all for pennies on the dollar. (Indeed, many Utah fortunes originated with this massive sale.) Not only did Hiram acquire the needed materials to begin the construction of the Salt Lake Theater, but what was not used was sold for a profit of $40,000, enabling the purchase of additional materials that made the theater a truly grand edifice.

tives were called back to the fort to sell off its buildings— bunkhouses, storehouses, stables, corrals, workshops, powder magazines, and a theater—together with the equipment, supplies, and other materials they housed.

While federal troops had largely abandoned Camp Floyd with the onset of the Civil War, army representaResidence of Hiram B. Clawson Sr. at 3 South 300 East; formerly the home of Lorenzo Snow.

20 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER

In 1859 Hiram worked with Truman Angell and Ralph Ramsay to design and construct the Eagle Gate entrance to Brigham Young’s property on South Temple.

One evening that same year, President Young was attending a theatrical at the Social Hall and found occasion to speak to Hiram about securing a good location to build a new theater with adequate seating. Soon the lot on the northwest corner of 100 South and State Street was purchased from Reynolds Cahoon, but the building itself was delayed because of cost concerns and the unavailability of needed materials.

In 1860 Hiram was appointed treasurer of Salt Lake City, and he was elected a member of the state legislature. He also purchased a large home built by Lorenzo Snow on the southeast corner of South Temple and 300 East. While the home was once described as the most pretentious dwelling in the city, Hiram’s sole desire was to provide for his rapidly growing family.

William H. Folsum, familiar with the London Drury Lane and Boston Theaters, was named architect of the Salt Lake Theater. Hiram, at age 35, was placed in charge of construction when it began in July 1861. The theater, with three horseshoe balconies and an expansive ground floor, was designed to seat 1500 people. In order to place the heavy beams supporting the forty-foot ceiling and slightly lower arches, Hiram diverted the south fork of City Creek and constructed a water wheel providing power for hoisting. The core walls of the theater were adobe; the roof was self-supporting. The Salt Lake Theater was completed in March 1862, and much of what was learned as this building went up was employed five years later in the construction of the Tabernacle on Temple Square. A reporter once needled Brigham Young about the cost of the extravagant chandelier hanging in the lobby of the theater, and Brigham answered that he had personally repurposed an old wagon to create the chandelier. While Hiram Clawson did much of the work, the Salt Lake Theater was Brigham Young’s pride and joy, and his favorite plays were those of William Shakespeare on the one hand and popular comedies on the other. Hiram skillfully contracted Salt Lake Theater performers and performances for nearly thirty years.

NO 4 In 1868, Emily Augusta Young became Hiram’s fourth wife. She was the daughter of Brigham and Emily Dow Partridge Young. The marriage required the building of another house on Fifth East between South Temple and 100 South—and indeed Hiram’s “residence” became several houses on a little street named Clawson Place, where many family members lived over the years. The street sign remains. Hiram gave birthday parties for each of his children and took them on merry sleigh rides in the winter. His youngest daughters recalled in an audio recording made in 1963 that theirs was a happy family and that they adored their gentle and loving father. Hiram continued to be assigned military duty. During the Utah Black Hawk War (1865–1868) he was commissioned Adjutant General and Aide-de-Camp to General Daniel H. Wells, commander of the Nauvoo Legion. He technically served in this capacity until the Legion was formally disbanded in 1870. In 1865, Hiram entered the mercantile business as “H. B. Clawson,” partnering with Horace S. Eldredge to buy out the interest of William Hooper in a local general store. Three years later, the store was sold to Brigham Young as the nucleus of what may have been the first American department store, Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution. From 1868 to 1873 H. B. was the first general manager of ZCMI; he served in that position again in 1875. Perhaps his most important The Salt Lake Theater bore the title “Cathedral of the Desert.” Dedicated March 6, 1862, this famous theater delighted pioneer audiences with the world’s greatest talent. From the time it was built, Salt Lake City became known as a center for music and drama. SALT LAKE THEATRE BY CORNELIUS SALISBURY

Maude Adams

22 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER innovation was to employ women sales staff. Not only did this provide LDS women new work opportunities, it significantly boosted sales. Hiram also oversaw the construction of a new building on Main Street that better accommodated the expanding operations of the store. A beautiful cast-iron façade still remains at that location.

In 1876, H. B. bought the dry goods department of ZCMI and moved it to an independent building on South Temple west of Main Street, where, strangely enough, he also stocked explosives. A devastating fire and explosion destroyed the store, the Council House next door, and Clawson’s taste for the mercantile businessClearlyforever.H.B. retained ties to the business world, however, and was named president of Deseret Hospital and manager of Beck’s Hot Springs during the 1880s. But his most-loved assignments required his diplomatic and people skills, and Clawson soon became known as “the Mormon diplomat,” crossing the plains forty-two times on diplomatic and goodwill assignments from Church leaders. While filling such assignments, Clawson also found opportunities to book famous actors for performances at the Salt Lake Theater. He knew virtually all the popular performers of his day, from Edwin Booth, John and Ethel Barrymore, and P. T. Barnum to Maude Adams,2 Sarah Bernhardt, and “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Clawson also worked with local luminaries like Phil Margetts, Orson F. Whitney, and members of his own family, and they all responded with memorable performances. As part of his ecclesiastical duties, H.B. was a member of the Council of Fifty, served as the Bishop of the 12th Ward from 1884 to 1902, and in 1904, he was made Stake Patriarch. In 1888, following passage of the federal EdmundsTucker Act, Clawson served a maximum prison sentence of six months for “unlawful cohabitation” and paid a fine of $300. Entirely unwilling to renounce his wives and children, he declared, “Prison with honor rather than liberty with dishonor.” He shared a cell with his son, Rudger, whose case was used to test the law against arguments that men should be able to care for their families. During his and Rudger’s imprisonment, Hiram often entertained other prisoners with stories. One night he recited from memory The Maniac3 with Rudger providing the sound effects of rattling chains and screams. It was so real and scary that the warden apparently asked Hiram not to repeat it. Rudger Clawson later became a member and eventually president of the Quorum of the Twelve. In 1895 Clawson traveled to Washington, DC, with a delegation committed to persuading Congress to grant statehood to Utah. As always, his skills proved effective. In his History of Utah, Orson F. Whitney opined that “few men are better known in the Mormon community, or have been more active in the social, commercial, professional and military life of Utah, than General Hiram Bradley Clawson.” While memories of Clawson

3 Unknown reference, but possibly a dramatic monologue of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” (1843), given that early twentieth-century films and plays use the title The Maniac in reference to adaptations of this Poe work.

2 Maude Adams was born in Utah, making her debut on the stage of the Salt Lake Theater at the tender age of eighteen months in the arms of her actress mother, Annie Adams. She became one of the greatest stars on Broadway. Indeed, J. M. Barrie adapted his play Peter Pan for a Broadway production starring Maude, and she played it around the world—including at the Salt Lake Theater at the request of her lifelong friend, Hiram Clawson.

Sources: Scott Romney Clawson, Shirley Young Clawson, A Family History: The Clawson Heritage (1991); Vida Fox Clawson, “Life Sketch” (1926); Lorin Groesbeck, “Camp Floyd and the Mormons,” Intermountain Histories, online; Utah Division of State History, Markers and Monuments Database; George D. Pyper, The Romance of an Old Playhouse (1928); Lou Jean Wiggins, “Hiram Clawson,” Daughters of Utah Pioneers Lesson, October 2008; Brad Wright, audio recording by KSL Television News Director (1963); Martha Sonntag Bradley, ZCMI: America’s First Department Store (1991); Ronald W. Walker, “The Salt Lake Theatre,” Utah History Encyclopedia, 1online.Sometimes debunked as popular myth, this quotation is documented by William P. McKinnon in “Causes of the Utah War,” Vedette: A Newsletter of the Fort Douglas Military Museum (Spring 2007).

NO 4 remain in the shadow of his greatest friend and mentor, Brigham Young, and while ZCMI, the Salt Lake Theater, the Social Hall, and the original Eagle Gate have passed into history, Clawson’s spirit and influences are indelibly etched in the beauty, culture, and landscape of Salt Lake City. Men like H. B. Clawson were necessary to the creation of a rich and enduring civilization in an unlikely wilderness—men whose greatest hope was to lift the spirits and faith of family and friends.

The curtain that hung in the Salt Lake Theater is on display at the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum, along with many other historical relics from the theater. Dedicated on July 23, 1950, the museum also houses the original 1859 Ralph Ramsey carving of the eagle that sat atop the Eagle Gate.

24 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER HARD WORK, PLANNING, A ND BRILLIANCE: David Eccles

25PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4

David Eccles was a nineteenth-century Mormon who made an enduring mark on Utah’s economic history. Born in poverty in Scotland, Eccles founded successful Utah firms in lumbering, banking, sugar, and construction. He achieved success and personal wealth through hard work, careful planning, and close attention to economic trends.

David was born May 12, 1849, the son of William Eccles, a Scot, and Sarah Hutchinson, a native of Ireland. William and Sarah were married in 1843 and lived in Paisley, a textile center eight miles west of Glasgow. Their family eventually included seven children.1 A wood turner by trade, William earned a modest income by shaping utensils, especially kitchen utensils, on his lathe. Over time cataracts dimmed William’s vision, and he learned to shape the products by feel. To compensate for the disability, William and Sarah moved their family to Glasgow where they expected to earn a better living. Despite their best intentions, however, they and their children often lived on the edge of total deprivation. Understandably, William and Sarah dreamed constantly of better lives for themselves and their growing family. After converting to Mormonism in 1842 William was persuaded that he had found the key for which he had been searching. He baptized Sarah in 1843, and they almost immediately began making plans to gather with the Saints in Nauvoo. In their desperate economic situation, however, they could not leave Scotland immediately. Indeed, by Thomas G. Alexander

Finally, in 1863 the Eccles family negotiated a £75 grant (about $375) from the Church’s Perpetual Emigrating Fund and set sail for the United States. Shortly after their East Coast arrival, however, John temporarily returned to Scotland, leaving fourteenyear-old David as the oldest child to travel West with the family. Following their arrival in Utah, the family settled first in Ogden, afterward in Liberty, and finally in Eden, where William filed for a homestead. He continued to turn utensils on his lathe, and David and his younger brother Stewart peddled them in settlements from Ogden to Brigham City. In 1867, after John had returned to the US, the Eccles family and their Moyes cousins moved to Oregon City, where William, David (now eighteen), John (twenty), and Stewart (sixteen) cut cordwood. This backbreaking labor introduced David to the timber business by which he would make his fortune.4 Two years later—the year the transcontinental railroad was completed—most of the family returned to Ogden, soon to become Utah’s second largest city and its railroad center. During the winter of 1869–70, David and Stewart worked in various jobs, harvesting and hauling hay, cutting lumber, freighting goods for Union Pacific, and helping their father on his homestead in Eden. Impelled by an entrepreneurial spirit, David hated to work for others. So he purchased a team of oxen and negotiated a contract to furnish logs for the Wheeler sawmill on Wheeler Creek and the Ogden River. Only a short term into the project, however, he had a setback when his oxen were killed in an accident.5 Forced once again to work for others, he signed on with Union Pacific’s Almy coal mine in Wyoming in 1871. Recognizing David’s enthusiasm and industry, the boss hired him as a bookkeeper, but David’s lack of education cost him the job when it

26 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER they would wait to do so for nearly twenty years. In the meantime, they eked out a living as their family continued to grow. As soon as the two oldest sons, John and David, could fend for themselves they were required to work—even though Scotland’s laws required that all children attend school. Because both boys worked from a very young age, neither attended school for much more than a year,2 but instead spent their days in the streets selling the wooden kitchen utensils and resin-stick lighters their father fabricated.3 By 1860, when David turned eleven, he was haunting not only the streets of his native Glasgow but those of Edinburgh, 45 miles distant, driving a small, burro-pulled cart from which he peddled the family wares.

DETAIL OF ART BY ANTON MAUVE, 1870

27PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 was discovered he could not add numbers. And because Chinese immigrants were willing to work in the mines for less pay than Euro-Americans, the company laid him off Returning to Ogden in early 1872 David arranged to supply logs for a mill on Monte Cristo, forty-five miles east of Ogden, beginning late that spring. Nagged by the realization that he needed better mathematics skills, he enrolled in Louis F. Moench’s private school in Ogden during the winter of 1872–73 and again during the following winter.6 While in school the first winter, he contracted to take a load of coffins to Pioche, Nevada, and the next summer he partnered with Henry E. Gibson and W. T. Van Noy to run a lumber mill. By the end of his two terms at Moench’s school, he could add a row of figures at lightning speed, and in 1874 Eccles, Gibson, and Van Noy opened a lumber yard in Ogden. During summers, David also continued to supply logs to Monte Cristo, occasionally coming down the mountain to Huntsville for recreation. One such evening he danced with Bertha Marie Jensen, a native of Pannerup, Aarhus, Denmark, whom he had met at Moench’s school.7 They fell in love and, in December 1875, were married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. The couple eventually had twelve children, six boys and six girls.8

During the 1880s the demand for railroad ties had escalated when construction began on three transcontinental railways and a number of regional lines. Eccles recognized that a large integrated lumbering operation with access to major rail lines could supply the demand. Large tracts of old-growth timber covered much of the American northwest, and David Eccles set out to dominate the logging business in western and central Oregon and southern Washington. Eccles induced Union Pacific

After his marriage, David continued in the lumbering business on Monte Cristo with Gibson and Van Noy. Later he partnered only with Gibson, but in 1881 a disagreement with Gibson over a trade of Eccles’ horses for a team of broken-down oxen led David to organize his own company, a lumber yard on the corner of 24th Street and Lincoln Avenue in Ogden.9 Eccles soon expanded his lumbering enterprise to Scofield, about 50 miles northwest of Price; to the Wood River at Bullion, southwest of Hailey, Idaho; and to Beaver Canyon, near the Idaho-Montana border. While working in business with Scotsman John Stoddard of Wellsville, Utah, he fell in love with Stoddard’s daughter, Ellen. Although Ellen was nearly eighteen years younger than David, the two were married in the Logan Temple on January 2, 1885. Because the federal government had begun a vigorous campaign against polygamy in 1884, David kept his marriage to Ellen secret.10

The marriage produced five boys and four girls.11 Between 1884 and 1889, Eccles also engaged in politics. He served as Ogden’s alderman and mayor, and he oversaw the construction of a new city hall.12 He brought Mormon and non-Mormon business people together to organize the Chamber of Commerce, and he warmly congratulated Fred J. Kiesel, a non-Mormon who succeeded him as Ogden’s mayor in 1889. Some months later, Eccles and his partner, Thomas D. Dee, sold their water system to the city at a bargain price because Eccles believed that culinary water should be a public utility.13

Louis F. Moench

28 to expand its web lines to tap these vast stands of timber, and he invested in a number of Union Pacific’s branch railroads. Thus began the golden age of railroadEccles’logging.operations expanded exponentially. He purchased a mill at North Powder, Oregon, in 1883. Then, partnering in 1887 with Thomas F. Hall, O. N. Ramsey, and H. H. Spencer, Eccles built sawmills at Viento, Oregon and Chenowith, Washington. In 1888 Eccles moved his mill from Scofield, Utah, to Telocaset, thirty miles north of Baker, Oregon;14 in 1889 Eccles added a fourth partner, Charles W. Nibley, and the five men organized the Oregon Lumber Company. Among the five partners, Eccles held a controlling interest in the company, and other stockholders included many of Eccles’ business associates from Ogden.15 In 1889, David expanded his logging operations to North Powder, Oregon, and moved Ellen’s family there. Eccles and Nibley convinced Union Pacific in 1890 to construct a narrow, twenty-mile gauge line

PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 from Salisbury to Sumpter. Eccles invested in the line, and Union Pacific contracted with him to furnish 500,000 ties annually. Eccles opened a sawmill in Baker in 1892, and by 1893 Oregon Lumber had mills at Hood River, Meacham, North Powder, Baker, and Pleasant Valley. Oregon Lumber survived bad times and thrived in good ones. At least in part, Eccles’ company weathered the depression of 1893–97 by treating its employees fairly.16

29

As a faithful Latter-day Saint David Eccles sent sons on missions, although he never served a mission himself. At Heber J. Grant’s request Eccles subscribed to $200,000 in LDS Church bonds. He also paid off a $7000 debt of the Ogden Fifth Ward after President Lorenzo Snow authorized the bishop to use Eccles’ tithing to pay the debt.23

During the economic prosperity of the early twentieth century, Oregon Lumber expanded operations. In 1902 Eccles built a rail-accessible mill on the Columbia River near Inglis, Oregon, and the next year he purchased a lumber company at Hood River. In 1905, Union Pacific constructed a twenty-five-mile line from Hood River to access fir stands at Parkdale. As his earnings from lumbering increased, Eccles sweetened his wallet by investing in sugar. He had resisted the highly competitive sugar market until Elder Heber J. Grant asked him to invest in the LDS Church-owned Utah Sugar Company, the parent company of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company.17 In 1902 Thomas R. Cutler, U and I’s vicepresident and general manager, introduced him to Henry O. Havemeyer, president of the American Sugar Refining Company, the Sugar Trust. Havemeyer spent “most all day” trying to induce Eccles to sell the sugar companies of which David was president. The wily New Yorker apparently thought he could wear Eccles down, but Eccles finally told him bluntly, “We don’t have to sell, we don’t owe a dollar—this is what we’ll do, this is my price and nothing under that.”18 Accepting Eccles’ proposal, Havemeyer purchased 51 percent of the Ogden, Logan, and Oregon Sugar Companies at Eccles’ price, and he reorganized them as Amalgamated Sugar Company.19 Recognizing Eccles’ skill, Havemeyer kept David on as company president. He also insisted that his associates give Eccles a free hand to run the company.20 Eccles had also invested in banking.21 In 1881, Horace S. Eldredge, then-president of Deseret National Bank and manager of ZCMI, joined associates in chartering the First National Bank in Ogden,22 and in 1883 David Eccles became a stockholder. He was later named a director, and in 1892 became vice-president. In 1894 Eccles purchased the stock of bank president D. H. Peery and succeeded Peery as president. Eccles also became a director of the Deseret Savings and Deseret National banks in Salt Lake City in 1898. These banks and others were eventually combined by 1932 as First Security Bank, headquartered in Ogden, which was in turn purchased by Wells Fargo Bank in 2000.

While David Eccles amassed a fortune in various businesses, two young men, Edmund O. and William H. Wattis, began to work in construction. The Wattis brothers began taking grading contracts with the Corey brothers, their uncles. In 1881, the Corey brothers and Ira N. Spaulding organized Corey Brothers Construction Company, which they incorporated in 1886.24 The depression of the 1890s forced them into bankruptcy. They had borrowed heavily from First National Bank, and during reorganization of the company, Thomas D. Dee, James Pingree, Joseph Clark, and David Eccles—officers of the bank—acquired two-thirds of the company’s stock. Eccles held 36 percent, the largest block, and he insisted that the company carry no long-term debt. Eccles had confidence in William H. Wattis, appointing him vice-president and general manager of the firm.

toughs armed with rifles aimed at the OSL track layers. OSL’s chief engineer, William Ashton, jumped the fence “to call their [the riflemen’s] bluff.” As soon as he reached the other side, the riflemen greeted Ashton with a volley of shots. Fortunately, they shot blanks. Nevertheless, Utah Construction’s crews packed up and left, doing railway bank-widening jobs in Utah and Idaho instead. Union Pacific and LASL negotiators took a year to work out an agreement before Utah Construction could complete Union Pacific’s road to Las Vegas.28

David Eccles soon realized that Utah Construction could not prosper if they continued to take small contracts for portions of railroads or for realigning completed lines. David wanted to contract for a very large project, but he needed help to negotiate it. Eccles’ association with Henry Havemeyer opened the door to such an opportunity. Following the 1900 death of Collis P. Huntington, the Union Pacific’s Edward H. Harriman, gained control of the Southern Pacific Railroad as well. With control of both Union Pacific and Southern Pacific, Harriman monopolized the rail routes from Salt Lake City to California. Not yet satisfied, Harriman then began to squeeze George R. Gould’s Denver and Rio Grande Railroad that ran as far west as Ogden.29 In response, Gould determined to extend his own rail

On January 8, 1900, Edmund, William, and Warren L. Wattis incorporated Utah Construction Company, subscribing stock worth $8000 from an initial offering of $24,000. On February 8, 1900, Eccles and associates purchased the remaining Corey shares of Corey Brothers and Utah Construction for $24,000.25 Utah Construction finished the contracts that Corey Brothers had previously negotiated and began signing new contracts to build roads and railroads.26In1901,Utah Construction contracted with Oregon Short Line (OSL), a subsidiary of Union Pacific, to construct a roadbed from Modena, Utah, to Las Vegas, Nevada. This project pitted E. H. Harriman’s Union Pacific system against the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad (LASL) of Senator William Andrews Clark of Montana. The two railroads raced frantically to arrive first at narrow canyons where only one line would fit. Beginning at Modena, in Iron County near the Nevada border, Utah Contruction crews actually graded roadbed parallel to tracks already laid by the competing company’s crews.27 When Utah Construction’s crews reached narrow Caliente Canyon in Nevada, after laying rails “at the rate of a mile per day,” they found the LASL crew had strung a wire fence across the roadbed. Behind the fence stood

Andrew H. Christensen to supervise the Western Pacific construction from the Salt Lake end and E. O. Wattis to do so from the Oroville end. Crossing Bonneville Salt Flats, Christensen’s crews encountered a vast expanse of water-soaked salt lying on mud. They laid lumber on the salt, tracks on the lumber, and “trainloads of earth and gravel” on the salty mud until the roadbed would hold the train.36 Before 1905, Utah Construction had used nineteenth-century technology: horse-drawn plows, scrapers, and dump wagons. Crews hand-drilled most holes for placing charges of dynamite and nitroglycerine.37

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Wattis’ crews blazed a trail to the canyon, set up camps, brought in supplies by mule train, and blasted out Edmund O. Wattis and Martha Ann Bybee on their wedding day, June 25, 1879.

line west from Ogden to Oakland, California, and formed a new consortium, Western Pacific Railroad, with Walter Bartnett, who held rights to a route over Beckworth Pass and down the Feather River Canyon to Oroville, California.

The Western Pacific project required Utah Construction to adopt many new twentieth-century tools and technology, including “air compressors, power drills, small steam locomotives, dumpcars, . . . and steam shovels.”38 Although subcontractors did “lighter work,” the company’s crews did “much of the heavy grading.”39 When Wattis’ crews entered the Feather River Canyon in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, they realized that Christensen’s crossing of the Salt Flats had been a comparative walk in the park. A topographic map of the seventy-five miles of the Feather River Canyon reveals a nightmare of steep canyon walls where contour lines seem to lay on top of one another, and photographs of the region document a gloriously rugged landscape.

Right: Western Pacific passenger train in the Feather River Canyon, circa 1910.

A California firm won the contract for the route’s western leg from Oroville to Oakland, but no company jumped at the contract for the difficult eastern end of the route from Oroville through the Sierra Nevada Mountains and across Nevada to Salt Lake City.30 Eccles believed Utah Construction “could do the job,” so he went to New York to get Havemeyer’s help in securing the contract. After Havemeyer recommended Utah Construction to Western Pacific officers,31 Eccles “personally obligated himself for the successful performance of the contract.”32 While the contracts were being negotiated in 1905, Thomas D. Dee, the president of Utah Construction, contracted pneumonia and died. David Eccles succeeded him as president in July 1905.33 On September 30, Utah Construction signed the first of thirteen contracts to grade the road bed from Salt Lake City to Oroville.34 Since much of the work would take place in California, and since Western Pacific had established its offices in San Francisco, Eccles sent Edmund O. Wattis to open an office in that city in 1908. The company secured contracts for work on the West Coast from this Ecclesoffice.35assigned

Utah Construction logo from 1900–1958

Utah Construction repaid the loan from Deseret Savings, and Eccles may have eventually recovered the money he Despiteadvanced.41thissetback, Utah Construction had made its mark as one of the West’s major construction companies. The company had received $22.3 million for contracts that kept its crews and subcontractors busy from January 1906 to November 1909. The company hired more than 7700 workers on the project, many from Europe.42

Utah Construction continued to expand. While it was laying the Western Pacific route, it began a 135-mile line for the Nevada Northern Railroad from Cobre, Nevada, southward to Ely. Between September 1905 and September 1906, Utah Construction graded the roadbed, planted telegraph poles, and laid rails.43 Between 1908 and 1911 Utah Construction also completed a $2.5 million project in Oregon and smaller projects in Idaho, California, and Utah. On December 5, 1912, David Eccles had a heart attack and died while running to catch a train in Salt Lake City. David Eccles’ estate of $7.27 million was worth $183 million in 2017 dollars. Bertha received one-third of the estate, a widow’s share, and

32 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER a wagon road to haul in provisions and equipment. In some places, surveyors had to hang by cables to drive in the center line and cut and fill stakes.40 Engineers had to exert their inventiveness to design a roadbed with twentydegree curves as required by Western Pacific codes. Eleven men died working on a rope bridge and on the cliffs at Cromberg, and five died in an explosion at Beckwourth Pass. At Grizzly Creek, the crews had to raft around sheer cliffs. Utah Construction blasted forty tunnels of between 40 and 7500 feet in length. They built bridges and trestles and graded almost impossible cuts and fills. At his home in Oroville, E. O. Wattis could hear the blasting. As construction proceeded, Eccles faced a challenge from the bank panic and recession of 1907. Dalzell Brown, Western Pacific’s treasurer, was also the manager of California Safe Deposit, and sent Utah Construction two checks totaling nearly $236,000. But Brown knew that California Safe Deposit was insolvent and could not redeem the checks. Since Utah Construction’s employees had to be paid, David Eccles signed for a personal loan with Deseret Savings Bank for $100,000 and drew $125,000 from Utah Construction’s undivided profits. The company and Eccles absorbed the loss.

The Payette Valley Railroad ran from Payette to Emmett Idaho and was built by Eccles and Nibley companies from Utah. The line was absorbed by Oregon Short Line in 1914.

As a plural wife, Ellen received no inheritance. However, Ellen had accumulated stock in some of her husband’s businesses which she pooled to form the Eccles Investment Company. Under the leadership of Marriner S. Eccles, Ellen’s oldest son, the Eccles Investment Company prospered, and the holdings of Ellen’s family eventually eclipsed those of the David Eccles Company that held the interests of Bertha’s family.46 Marriner and his brother George, Ellen’s sons, weathered the banking crisis of the Great Depression and organized the First Security Corporation, shepherding it into a regional power. During this same time, Marriner helped save the American economy from disaster through his authorship of federal banking legislation and his chairmanship of the Federal Reserve System. In 1971 Leonard J. Arrington interviewed Marriner S. Eccles, who was at that time president of both the Utah Construction Company and First Security Corporation. Eccles told Arrington that Utah Construction was then worth in excess of $60 million. “The Eccles family holdings in First Security,” he said, “are chicken feed compared to UtahDavidConstruction.”47Ecclesowedhis success to hard work, thrift, a recognition of economic trends, and the ability to assess strengths of associates.48 After his marriage to his first wife, Bertha, he carried no long-term debt. Earnings in lumbering provided the basis for his fortune. He used these funds for investment in banking and sugar. Earnings from banking provided funds for investment in Utah Construction. At the time of his death, Eccles held an interest in 83 companies ranging alphabetically from Adams Copper Mining & Smelting in Washington County, Utah, to ZCMI in Salt Lake City.

33PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 Eccles’ children by both his wives received equal shares of the remainder.44 Before he died Eccles had purchased a share of a land and livestock company which his son, David C. Eccles, sold to Utah Construction in 1913 to pay the inheritance tax on his father’s estate: $297,348.34.45

1 Sarah Eccles Baird, “Memoirs,” 1, David Eccles Papers, series III, box 8, folder 3, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah.

2 Bertha Eccles, “Memoirs of Bertha Eccles as Concerns Her Husband, David Eccles,” 15, David Eccles Papers, series III, box 8, folder 15, Special Collections, WSU.

3 Baird 2. Most people of this time heated and cooked with coal, lighting it with resin sticks. 4 Baird 3. 5 Eccles 23. 6 Eccles 13. Moench, a well-educated immigrant from Germany’s Rheinland, later became the first principal of Weber Stake Academy, now Weber State University.

8 www.Familysearch.org.

7 Eccles 13–14.

Thomas G. Alexander is the Lemuel Hardison Redd, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Western American History at Brigham Young University. He acknowledges the research and presentational assistance of Beverly Ahlstrom, Tracy AlexanderZappala, and Brooke Ann Alexander and the contributions of Richard Sadler, Joan Hubbard, John Sillito, and other Special Collections staff at Stewart Library, Weber State University; of Brad Cole and Arrington Archives staff at MerrillCazier Library, Utah State University; of Greg Thompson and Special Collections staff at Marriott Library, University of Utah; of Lynn Wardle; and of Utah International.

33 Sterling D. Sessions and Gene A. Sessions, A History of Utah International: From Construction to Mining (2005), 17. av 34 Warren L. Wattis, Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Utah Construction Company, 30 Sep 1905, and Minutes of Meeting of the Board of Directors of Utah Construction Company, 23 Nov 1905; “Agreement made and entered into this 31st day of October, 1905 … between Western Pacific Railway Company … and The Utah Construction Company”; and James Pingree, Resolution of Utah Construction Company, 24 Feb 1906, all from Utah Construction Company Papers, series 91, box 40, folder 7, Special Collections, Weber State University. 35 Corey 19–20. 36 Corey 15. 37 Corey 17–18. 38 Corey 15–16. 39 Corey 16. 40 Kneiss, “Fifty Candles”; Sessions and Sessions, 17–19. 41 See Plaintiff ’s Brief in Utah Construction Company vs. Western Pacific Railway Company. See also Royal Eccles, interview by Sumner P. Nelson, Ogden, Utah, 23 Sep 1929, David Eccles Papers, series III, box 8, folder

A statue of Marriner S. Eccles was unveiled on the North Plaza of the Utah State Capitol on September 16, 2014; sculpted by Utah artist Mark DeGraffenried. The Federal Reserve

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34 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 9 Eccles19–20; 16. 10 Thomas G. Alexander, “Charles S. Zane, Apostle of the New Era,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 34 (Fall 1966): 1211290–314.www.Familysearch.orgJohnWatson,interview, Ogden, Utah, 20 Sep 1929, 5, David Eccles Papers, series III, box 8, Special Collections, WSU. 13 Watson 6. 14 Thomas G. Alexander, A Clash of Interests: Interior Department and Mountain West, 1863–1896 (1977), 90–5; Thomas G. Alexander, The Rise of Multiple-Use Stewardship in the Intermountain West: A History of Region 4 of the Forest Service (USDA Forest Service 1987), 9. 15 Watson 11. Nibley, a Scot like Eccles, later became Presiding Bishop of the LDS Church. Other stockholders in the Oregon Lumber Company were Thomas D. Dee, N. C. Flygare, D. H. Peery, Joseph Clark, Moroni Brown, Peter Minnoch, H. H. Young, and John 16Watson.Leonard J. Arrington, “Utah and the Depression of the 1890s,” Utah Historical Quarterly 29 (January 1961): 3–18; and Ronald W. Walker, “Crisis in Zion: Heber J. Grant and the Panic of 1893,” Arizona and the West 21 (1979): 17257–78.Leonard J. Arrington, Beet Sugar in the West: A History of the Utah: Idaho Sugar Company, 1891–1966 (1966), 58, 177. 18 Eccles 33. 19 Leonard J. Arrington, David Eccles: Pioneer Western Industrialist (1975), 246. 20 Eccles 32–3. 21 First National Bank and First Savings Bank: Fifty-two Years of Leadership, 1875–1927 (privately printed, 1927). 22 Watson 10. 23 Watson 12–3. 24 Leonard J. Arrington History Archives, Salt Lake Tribune, 1 Jan 1886, series IX, box 99, folder 8, Special Collections, Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, Utah. 25 Eccles 34. 26 Thomas D. Dee and W. L. Wattis, Agreement between Corey Brothers and Utah Construction Company, 8 Jan 1900, series 60/1, box 9, folder 10, Utah Construction Company Papers, Special Collections, Weber State University; Lester S. Corey, “Utah Construction & Mining Co.: An Historical Narrative,” ca. 1964, 8–9, Leonard J. Arrington History Archives, series VII, box 30, folder 1, 3.47, 50–82, Special Collections, Merrill-Cazier Library, Utah State University, Logan, Utah. 27 Corey 9. 28 Corey 10. One of the stations in Caliente Canyon is named “Eccles” after David Eccles.

inMarrinerhonornamedD.C.ington,inBuildingWash-wasinof1982.

29 G. H. Kneiss, “Fifty Candles for Western Pacific,” online; “Western Pacific, Oroville to Salt Lake City: ‘Feather River Canyon Route,’” Utah Construction Company Papers, box 65, folder 2, 1.2, Special Collections, Weber State 323130University.Corey14.Eccles37.“WesternPacific: Oroville to Salt Lake City.”

35

The Val A. Browning Center at Weber State University includes the Eccles Theatre, part of the performing arts department there. At BYU’s Marriott School of Business, the Eccles Scholars Awards are given to promising MBS students with an interest in international business.Evenin Washington DC the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building on Constitution Avenue is the headquarters of the US Federal Reserve Bank system.“The David Eccles School of Business presents each student with a coin commemorating the school’s namesake, David Eccles, and the values he espoused.

The Eccles Broadcast Center on the University of Utah campus is the home of Utah’s PBS-affiliated television station KUED as well as the state’s public radio station and one other broadcast television outlet. The Utah Education Network is also located at the Eccles Broadcast

“The school’s nine values are imprinted on the coin as a reminder to students that no matter where they come from, these values will help them with where they’re going.” (See “A Legend & a Legacy,” online at University of Utah DavidSchoolEcclesofBusiness.) Monuments

The Eccles Legacy Center. Viewers of programming on KUED-TV will also notice the frequent sponsorship of high quality programming funded by Eccles family foundations.

PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 35 27; “Life of David Eccles: An incident pertaining to First National Bank, Utah Construction Company, California Safe Deposit & Trust Company,” David Eccles Papers, series III, box 7, folder 13; and First National Bank of Ogden, et al., “Life of David Eccles,” n.d., all at Special Collections, Weber State University. 42 Sessions and Sessions 17–18. 43 Sessions and Sessions 19. 44 David C. Eccles to Jesse D. Jewkes, 1 Jun 1914, David Eccles Papers, box 9, folder 25, Special Collections, Weber State 45University.Corey21–24; Arrington, David Eccles 253. Jasper Harrell and John Sparks had purchased land for a ranch in Nevada. They also bought homesteaders’ holdings and land scrip which they exchanged for more land. When Sparks was elected Nevada governor, he sold his interest to Harrell. After Harrell died, Eccles, Utah Construction, and Utah National Bank bought Harrell’s land, incorporating as “Vinyard Land & Stock Company.” 46 Arrington, David Eccles 190, 253. 47 Arrington interview with Marriner Eccles, 2, Arrington Papers, Special Collections, Utah State University. 48 Eccles 19–20.

Scarcely a day passes in twenty-first century Utah that residents do not encounter the Eccles family name in some fashion. The descendants of David Eccles and his pioneer family have created a remarkable legacy that continues to benefit Utahns in many ways. The Eccles name is attached to a street in Ogden, as well as David Eccles’ historic home. The University of Utah plays football in the Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City, and Southern Utah University plays their games at the Eccles Coliseum in Cedar City. The new and grand theater in downtown Salt Lake City is named the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Theater and at Park City you can enjoy an evening at the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Center for the Performing Arts. The wonderfully restored 94 year-old theater on Main Street in Logan is the Ellen Eccles Theatre. The prominent David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah was named for the pioneer businessman in 1991. On the same campus you will find the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library associated with the medical school, and the patient focused Hope Fox Eccles Health Library as well as the Hope Fox Eccles Clinical Library. The Spencer Fox Eccles Business Building is also located on the University of Utah campus.

36 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEERART BY RICHARD HULL

Jewish OWNERS IN PIONEER UTAH

by Rochelle Kaplan

37PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 EARLY

Julius & Fanny Brooks

J ewish business owners played prominent roles in virtually every nineteenthcentury American urban center, and Salt Lake City was no exception to that rule. Despite the fact that the early Saints paradoxically classified Jewish immigrants to Utah with other “Gentile” settlers, their contributions to Utah’s economy, culture, and well-being were increasingly respected and appreciated as the nineteenth century matured. Among the earliest Jewish families to settle in Utah was that of Julius and Fanny Bruck Brooks, who first arrived in 1854 via the Overland Route from Independence, Missouri. The Brookses immigrated to the US from Frankenstein, a town in the small, triangular area of southeastern Germany associated with the region of Silesia, and among their close friends in the old world were members of the extended family of Alexander Niebaur—who had joined the Church and immigrated to Nauvoo in 1841. After arriving in Salt Lake, the Brookses wintered with Neibaur’s family, leaving early in the spring of 1855 for California. They would also spend

BUSINESS

placed on the National Historic Register in 1982 whose façade still stands.

Fred noted that business increased until 1868, when Zion’s Co-operative Mercantile Institution was opened and Brigham Young’s “buy Mormon” directive was issued. The 1868-69 period is generally considered the low ebb of LDSJewish relations in Utah, and the Auerbach brothers were faced with hard decisions. Theodore was divorced in 1869 and moved to New York. Fred and Sam determined to stay in Utah, buying property in Corinne, Ogden, and other towns along prominent Utah rail routes. Utah’s mining boom of the early 1870s rescued the Auerbachs from financial disaster. Even their Salt Lake store once again thrived, saved in part by loyal Mormon customers who used the store’s back entrance during the “prohibition” years. In 1879 Samuel Auerbach married Eveline Brooks, daughter of Julian and Fanny, thereby cementing a close relationship between the two families.

The Panama Route involved crossing the Atlantic Ocean to Panama, going by horse through lush, tangled rainforests, then catching a second boat to California. Arriving at California’s gold fields in 1857, the Auerbachs set up dry goods stores in Rabbit Creek and La Porte. But as their businesses waned along with the nation’s gold fever, they determined to move to Utah in 1863.

Auerbach’s remained a vital downtown draw and prominent landmark until it closed in 1979. several years in Oregon and Idaho before returning permanently to Salt Lake in 1864, taking up residence in a small adobe house with the Pony Express stables on one side and a saloon on the other. The following year they bought a larger (and much quieter) home on the corner of Third South and MainAftStreet.erbecoming involved in real estate, Julius supported Fanny’s request to expand their residence into a boarding house and to create a dining hall that could serve forty at a time. Soon they had a thriving business. However, when Brigham Young decreed in 1868 that Mormons should do business only with other Mormons, their boarders began disappearing. After Julius determined to declare bankruptcy, Fanny went to Brigham Young himself to plead her case, apparently demanding that he buy her property. Young responded that the policy in question was not directed at the Brooks family, agreeing with Fanny that she and Julius had helped strengthen the community. He told her that he would hate to see her family leave and told her not to worry. Soon, their boarders returned and their rooms were full. By 1871, Julian and Fanny owned an auction firm, a furniture business, a bakery, and a millinery shop—which Fanny operated—that also sold children’s wear and fashion trimmings. In 1879, Julius bought property on State Street and developed the Brooks Arcade, a tony European-style shopping center Brooks Arcade

Among the most prominent of early Jewish merchants in Utah were the Auerbach brothers Frederick, Samuel, and Theodore—who took the Panama Route from their native Prussia to the American West, with Fred coming first and his brothers following.

Brigham Young helped them secure property on East Temple (now Main Street) for their People’s Store (later “F. Auerbach and Bro.” and then simply “Auerbach’s”).

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By 1870 the Ransohoff brothers also had stores in Ogden and Corinne. This same year, Nicholas helped found Utah’s Liberal Party, created to counter LDS political influence and certain of Brigham Young’s policies that were seemingly hostile to mining. The Liberal Party lasted through 1893 when the burgeoning statehood movement seemed to guarantee broader Constitutional accountability.

Brothers Elias and Nicholas Ransohoff were wholesale grocers and traders from Peckelsheim, Westphalen, Germany, who moved to Utah in 1858 to do business with the US military at Camp Floyd (now a national historic site near Fairfield, Utah) and were among the first Jews to freight goods across the plains from the East. Joined later by another brother, Leopold, they loaned Brigham Young $30,000 to buy out the military’s pork supply when occupying troops departed in 1864. That same year, their downtown department store—Ransohoff ’s—opened to strong endorsements. Noting recent changes to Salt Lake City’s downtown area, the Salt Lake Telegraph emphasized in July 1864 that “every foot of ground” along Main Street had been “claimed for commercial purposes” and pointed to three prominent Jewish establishments: Siegel & Company, Bodenberg and Kahn, and Ransohoff ’s. A few weeks earlier, a Fort Douglas newspaper, the Union Vedette, had previewed Ransohoff ’s on the eve of its opening: “Already, upstairs and down are choicest merchandise strewn about in profusion, preparatory to opening day. Our eyes were fairly dazzled at the heaps on heaps of splendid new goods. If we had been a female, or— Nicholas Ransohoff

like a friend of ours that we wot of—engaged in the millinery line, we think we should have gone entirely crazy. There was everything there, from a shoe string or a bit of choice ribbon, up through all the grades of hoops, crinoline, balmorals, silks, clothes, etc. etc.”

During the mid-1870s Leopold left Salt Lake for Denver and then California; he founded Ransohoff ’s Department Store in San Francisco, featured briefly in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo (1958). Eventually, the flagship Salt Lake store was purchased by the LDS Church and incorporated into ZCMI. Emigrating from Bavaria in the late 1850s, Charles Popper settled in Placer, California, and worked as a butcher in “gold country” before moving to Salt Lake in the early 1860s. Popper was Utah’s first Jewish rancher and its first non-Mormon butcher, and his name lives on in Popperton Park, located where his animal stockyards once stood. When he closed his butcher shop on the Jewish High Holy Days, Mormon butchers closed their shops out of respect for him. He reciprocated by closing his shop on Pioneer Day. On the 150 acres of land he squatted on or bought (accounts vary) at the mouth of Dry Canyon, Popper built a slaughterhouse and a soap-and-candle factory. Popper accumulated vast ranches along the Utah-Colorado border and supplied beef to federal troops stationed in Utah at 9¾ cents a pound.

40 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER and First South. A second Salt Lake clothing store appeared in 1866, followed a few years later by an Ogden store. The three brothers also owned the Siegel Consolidated Mining Company in Nevada, which produced iron manganese and silver, and Henry Siegel founded a mercury mine. When the First Hebrew Benevolent Society of Great Salt Lake City was established in 1865 with Fred Auerbach as president, Solomon Siegel was named treasurer. During his time in Salt Lake City in 1877, Rabbi I.M. Wise made this entry in his diary: “Among the Israelites [in Salt Lake City] I saw several houses [i.e., businesses] like Auerbach, Siegel, Kahn Bros, which are very large firms. Others, like Bamberger Bros, are engaged in mining, Charles Popper in wholesale butchery and other business.” In 1890 Henry Siegel was among the Jewish incorporators of the Salt Lake Valley Loan and Trust. When the general at Camp Douglas appropriated Popper’s land, he fought back. He lost two rounds in the general lands office and his appeal to the Secretary of the Interior. But he persevered, bolstered by his development of an Idaho mine that paid him $60,000 a month. He moved his family to Washington, DC, and laid siege to Congress for eleven years, regaining title to the Utah land through a special Congressional act. Although he later moved his family to New York, he declared in a 1906 interview that he would always be a Utah resident: “My heart and interests are here and always will be.”

Brothers Henry, Joseph, and Solomon Siegel emigrated from Redelheim, Bavaria, in 1841, settling first in Baltimore and then, drawn by opportunities on the western frontier, in the Dakota Territory and Montana, where they established successful trading posts. They came to Utah in 1864, perhaps encouraged to do so by fellow Bavarian Charles Popper. The Siegels’ first business in Utah opened that same year, a dry goods store located on East Temple Solomon Siegel

In February 1893 three of Ichel and Auguste’s four youngest children—the oldest barely thirteen—died within a single week during a diptheria outbreak. Their parents eventually were buried near them in Salt Lake’s B’nai Israel Cemetery. Ichel and Auguste’s only surviving son, Leon Lazier Watters, became a noted chemist, inventor, and historian; he was also a close friend of Albert Einstein. Partly through Einstein’s encouragement, Leon established at Cal Tech during the early Brothers Abraham and Ichel Watters (ancestors of Ralph Becker, a recent Salt Lake City mayor), emigrated from Rogosin, West Prussia, about 1849. Abe took the long sea route around the southern tip of South America; Ichel, the shorter Panama route. Like other early Jewish businessmen in Utah, the brothers first went to California—where one brother, Leiser, stayed. Likely attracted to Salt Lake by other Jewish businessmen already established there, Abraham and Ichel opened the city’s first jewelry store on Main Street in 1866. Eveline Brooks Auerbach wrote this of the Watters brothers in her memoir: “They would have been very prosperous had they both not antagonized the Mormons, particularly Mr. Ichel Watters; he was always running them down. His friends warned him if he did not keep his mouth shut, some day they would kill him. One Ichel’s only surviving son, Leon Lazier Watters, became a noted chemist, inventor, and close friend of Albert Einstein.

Two years later Ichel married Auguste Graupe in Charles and Carlotta Popper’s grand home on West Temple. By then Ichel was a stockbroker; in later years, he also became a pawnbroker. Abraham divided his time between San Francisco and Salt Lake; in 1878 he moved to England, but returned to Utah a decade later to live with his brother.

evening [in 1869] he was walking home alone, when three men attacked him and would have killed him had not a man passing recognized [him and given] a terrible cry for help. They ran away, but R.C. Kimball was recognized; the other two escaped. Kimball was arrested, tried before Jeter Clinton, who was judge of the Supreme Court, and fined $10. At first it was thought Watters would lose his arm, but while he saved it, he never could use it again.”

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Interestingly, Sam and Emanuel wed two sisters, Sarah and Frances [Fanny] Cohen, respectively, daughters of Briner Cohen—who owned the Lester House Hotel and later the Delmonico Hotel (the “White House”) on the corner of Main Street and Second South. Samuel founded the free library at the Masonic Lodge, was a founder of the Liberal Party, and was active in Jewish affairs. The Samuel Kahn home on South Main Street became a hub of social activity, and Kahn’s wife, Sarah, developed a reputation as a remarkable hostess of visiting dignitaries. One of her guests—in 1869—was newly elected US Vice-President Schuyler Colfax.

Samuel came to be known as “Colonel Kahn” following his appointment to the staff of Utah territorial governor Eli Houston Murray, a strong supporter of the Liberal Party. In 1885, after developing a sudden illness, Sam sold his share of the family business to Emanuel, perhaps recognizing the gravity of his situation and wanting to ensure that his family would be well provided for following his death. The Jewish newspaper, American Israelite, published a long tribute when he died at age 46. Two years before his own death in 1905, Emanuel moved to San Francisco, vainly hoping the move would restore his health. Obituaries in Salt Lake papers praised his quiet and unfailing modesty despite his being a man of accomplishment, duty, and commitment, a man who “never interfered with the lives of other people.” The Emanuel Kahn home, at 678 East South Temple, is on the National Historic Register as an outstanding example of the Queen Anne style; it was designed by architect Henry Monheim (1824-1893), a Jewish immigrant to Salt Lake from Prussia, a member of the architectural team that designed the Salt Lake City and County Building. 1930s one of the nation’s first atomic research labs; he also developed sterile catgut for sutures, built the first portable disinfectors for the Army/Navy during World War I, and designed the mobile hospital unit used by British troops in North Africa during World War II. Samuel and Emanuel Kahn (which they pronounced Kane), originally from Prussia, came to the US in 1851, settling first in Philadelphia, where a third brother, Louis, remained. In the late 1850s Sam and Emanuel headed west to Illinois, then to the Kansas Territory, and finally to Utah to complete sales of a large stock of merchandise. In 1860, sometime after his arrival in Utah, Sam became a partner in a wholesale liquors venture headed by Nicholas Ransohoff; in 1863 he partnered with George Bodenberg in what became a leading grocery distribution firm in Utah, Idaho, and Montana. That partnership dissolved in 1867 when Sam and Emanuel established Kahn Brothers’ Wholesale Grocers.

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Brothers Alexander and Louis Cohn, from Dobryzn, Poland, established a dry goods store in Salt Lake’s downtown in the late 1860s. Known simply as “Cohn Bros.,” their business was located next to Siegels. Louis was twice elected to the city council and served as police and fire chief under Mayor Robert N. Baskin during the early 1890s. Alexander became president of the Jewish congregation, B’nai Israel. As with the Kahns, Alexander and Louis also married sisters.

Another set of successful early Jewish merchants were the Simon brothers, Fred, Louis, Joseph and Adolph; they also had a sister Ralla. Prominent Salt Lake businessmen from 1870 forward, they were active in civic and religious affairs. They were leading manufacturers and wholesalers of millinery for decades. Joseph kept a wholesale dry goods business, while Louis and Adolph established the elegant Paris Store. Fred, the eldest, headed the Salt Lake Coal Company and served as secretary of the Jewish Congregation and was also an early member of the city’s Chamber of Commerce, formed in 1887. The LDS community esteemed The Emanuel Kahn home, at 678 East South Temple, is on the National Historic Register as an outstanding example of the Queen Anne style, designed by Jewish architect Henry Monheim.

44 Fred because he resisted discrimination of any kind, including attempts to bar Mormons from the Chamber. In an 1888 letter to Caleb W. West, territorial governor, Fred argued against restricting the civil rights of Mormons because of their polygamy: “To punish a man and make him an outcast because he happens to belong to a religious sect which teaches certain things which he himself may not believe in, is making a precedent so far-reaching that it can only terminate by gradually disfranchising the Catholic for believing too much and the Infidel for believing too little.”

The Paris Millinery Store was legendary. Crowds gathered when it first opened on Main Street in 1901. When the Paris Store became a women and children’s clothing store on East Broadway in 1913, (they kept the wholesale business on West Temple), the Herald reported on its opening, noting that the window dresser was hired from NYC, an orchestra played on the balcony of the grand staircase, and women visitors were given roses. Like the Kahn brothers, Louis and Fred Simon wed two sisters, both daughters of Gumpert Goldberg, a long-time merchant in Montana and Corinne, Utah. Louis remained the store’s president for over twenty years; he was involved with his brothers in other Salt Lake businesses for forty years. Adolph died in 1917; Louis retired in 1920, selling the store to Emmanuel Dreyfous of Bon Marche in New Orleans, who moved to Utah and whose descendants still live here.

The distinction of being Utah’s only Jewish governor belongs to Simon Bamberger, elected in 1916 during the Progressive Era. Before that he had served as a senator in the state legislature. He was one of four brothers, the others being Herman, Jacob and Louis Bamberger. Simon was first a merchant, then with Briner Cohen bought Salt Lake City’s Delmonico Hotel, renaming it the White House. With his brothers, he became involved in mining in 1872 with the Silver Mountain Mine and the Sailor Jack Mines in Tintic and the Centennial Eureka Mine, and became a millionaire. Jacob Bamberger owned the Daly Mine. In later years, Jacob’s son Ernest also owned mines in the Park City area. Simon subsequently became involved in building railroads because he needed a way to ship coal from Sanpete County west across the Wasatch and into Nephi. He made fortunes in coal, mining and railroads. When Simon was building his railroad line from Salt Lake to Ogden, he owned a quarter of the Lake Resort, near

45PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 Farmington, and served as the resort’s vice president. Realizing he could boost passenger rail traffic on his line if he owned and enlarged the resort, he bought it from the prior owner, renamed it Lagoon, and drained swampland to expand the lake. The new resort opened in 1896 and included bowling, dancing and restaurants. In a few years Bamberger included thrill rides, swimming and boat rides on Lagoon Lake. In the twenties a swimming pool, more rides, horse racing and gambling were added, though the state legislature soon put an end to betting. (Lagoon thrills people even today, though no longer owned by the Bamberger family.)

As governor from 1916-20, Simon opposed deficit spending and supported prohibition, establishing a public utilities commission and department of public health, water conservation, workmen’s compensation, the right of labor to organize and the election of judges. He regulated securities law, ahead of such federal laws during the Depression. Under his leadership, the Democratic legislature passed a Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibited kickbacks from utility companies to public officials, signed a law making high school attendance compulsory, and another establishing a mine tax that went against his own financial interest. He urged bond passages to improve the state’s roads. The governor set up a special legislative session to ratify the 19th Amendment, giving women suffrage. Furthermore, apart from his work as governor, Bamberger organized Utahns to help destitute European Jews during WWI and to aid the Jewish newcomers of Clarion, Utah, in their ultimately doomed agricultural experiment. Samuel Newhouse, the father of copper mining in Utah, grew up in the East where he became a lawyer, then headed West, making a fortune as a mining financier, railroad owner and real estate man in Colorado and then Utah. In Utah he incorporated the Highland Boy Gold Mine, with himself as president, intending to produce gold, only to find out the mine was instead full of copper. With the electric age dawning, Newhouse realized a communications network linked by copper strands was crucial and so he changed his metallic focus. By 1899, John D. Rockefeller was the chief stockholder. He sold his share of Highland Boy, pocketed $4 million and bought claims near Bingham Canyon, the area now owned The Lagoon resort opened in 1896 and included bowling, dancing and restaurants. In a few years, Bamberger included thrill rides, swimming and boat rides on Lagoon Lake.

The magnate started to build the Hotel Newhouse in Salt Lake City, but bad investments in Canadian mining, misjudgment of market trends, the 1907 Panic, litigation, profligacy and a looming World War led to Newhouse losing much of his wealth. He liquidated his personal fortune at a fraction of its value. His marriage collapsed, although he and Ida remained friends. He stayed in Utah until 1919, then moved to Paris to live with his sister at the chateau he’d given her. Abraham and Adam Kuhn emigrated from Weisenheim, Germany. Abe came in 1852, owning stores first in the Midwest and then in Denver in 1860. In 1864, he opened another store in Salt Lake, then left for Montana and Europe, returning to Utah in 1869, where he joined Ad in business. This was in Corinne, near the site of the joining of the rails of the Transcontinental Railroad; at the time Corinne was the second largest city in Utah, and bustling with non-Mormons. The brothers ran mule freight trains from Denver to Montana and Utah. By 1870, the Kuhns had businesses in Corinne, Ogden, and Evanston, Wyoming. The brothers moved to Ogden in 1880, where they opened a wholesale dry goods and clothing business and purchased real estate. They also bought and sold hides, pelts and wool. Interviewed when he was nearing ninety, in 1927, Abe recalled his early adventures with Ad. When gold fever struck, the brothers headed to Montana. They bought gold dust in Montana, and then for safety would go without food and pretend to be penniless as by Kennecott/Rio Tinto. Newhouse also owned the Cactus Mine in Beaver, where he developed the town of Newhouse, 230 miles south of Salt Lake City, with homes and gardens for employees. He sold that mine in 1910 and lost control of Utah Consolidated Gold Mines to the Rockefellers.

46 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER (yes, that one) to see his dying brother (and business partner) in Paris, France. In 1912, the Salt Lake Rotarians named him Mr. Utah. He and his wife Ida had homes in Salt Lake City, London, Paris, and an estate on Long Island, NY. He was a philanthropist, building shelters for youth.

Newhouse built Salt Lake’s first skyscrapers, the elegant Beaux-Arts Boston and Newhouse Buildings, which still stand on Exchange Place today. He announced plans to build a new commercial district and constructed the Commercial Club Building, also on Exchange Place. He bought Popperton Place to develop as luxury housing and a beautiful park. In 1908 the Utah delegation endorsed Newhouse for US Vice President but he demurred. The next year, he broke a railroad time record, while racing to sail on the Lusitania Newhouse, Utah

Jacob Moritz, originally from Bavaria, realized that Salt Lake City was an up and coming commercial center of the Intermountain West—an ideal place to establish a brewery. He became vice president, treasurer and general manager of the Salt Lake Brewing Company. Before Prohibition, the company, located at 500 South and 1000 East, was one of the largest in the West. In 1891 the company produced 100,000 barrels of beer per year. Moritz distributed beer in five states and owned 36 Utah saloons that sold his beer exclusively. Interestingly, Jacob had friends among the LDS faithful, because in 1885 he was on a grand jury when the The Catcus mine stopped producing five years after the settlement of Newhouse and the town slowly died. The Kuhn brothers ran mule freight trains from Denver to Montana and Utah.

Jacob Moritz

47PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 they traveled. They took the gold to the East, where they bought hats, clothing, and outerwear, and then returned to the West to sell their merchandise. Abe lived past his ninetieth birthday and was revered as one of Ogden’s last surviving pioneers.

ART BY RICHARD HULL

Anna Marks was born in Poland in 1847, emigrating to London at fifteen, where she wed Wolff Marx. Sometime during the 1850s the couple emigrated to New York; during the late 1860s they moved to Utah and opened a general store in Salt Lake. In 1880 the Markses were attracted to the rich mining region of Tintic and moved their store to Eureka. As they neared their destination, they came to a roadblock: “In Tintic’s early days, two men claimed the land near Pinion Canyon, placing a toll gate in the narrow part. Anna was in the lead in a buggy followed by many wagons loaded with everything necessary to open a store. “She refused to pay the toll. A verbal war ensued, the air turning blue with Anna’s cuss words. She summoned her bodyguard and with guns drawn, they tore down the toll gate and went on to Eureka. She was soon in business. When Pat Shay contested her right to the property, Anna first relied on cuss words and then she pulled her guns. He went flying and so did the bullets.

Owing to the success of her store in Eureka, Anna purchased the White Cloud and Anna Rich Mines in the Tintic area; she also owned real estate there and in Salt Lake City. Anna had a historic battle with Denver and Rio Grande Railroad that mirrored her earlier confrontation on the dusty road to Eureka. Angry because, without hearing her concerns, officials claimed eminent domain over property she owned, she held up the building of the railroad at gunpoint until the company met her price to take a cross-section of her land.Insum, European Jews—mostly men, often brothers— came to America for adventure and with an entrepreneurial spirit. They started in the East, gradually moved west, often going to California before settling in Utah. They were usually literate, often highly cultured and knew Hebrew, and were active in establishing a Jewish community life in MormonDetail of the Newhouse building

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tion for two men already in jail. Moritz objected to the two men being tried multiple times for the same offense and the case was dismissed by the judge. That stand gained him the respect of Mormons, despite his involvement in the beer business. Even with prohibition looming, by 1908 the company produced over 41 million bottles of beer. Moritz bought a large downtown tract to develop a new business district. Moritz served a term in the state legislature, was a member of the Constitutional Convention, a director of a mine, president of B'nai Israel, and member of the Alta Club and Liberal Party. He chaired committees to advance Utah's mining industry, and raised money to build the first Salt Palace. When he died in 1910, in Germany, his estate was appraised at $327,000 (in today's purchasing dollars, about $8 million).

“From them on, no one crossed Anna Marks.”

49PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 dominated Utah. Almost all developed interests in mines, but they also had other businesses—in wholesale goods and groceries, apparel stores and in real estate. Some moved away from Utah in their later years but still kept ties to the state. Many stayed, and Utah was strengthened as a result. Source materials for this article include the following online web pages: Rochelle Kaplan, “The Earliest Utah Jews,” “Ogden Jews,” and “Corinne: Gentile Capital of Utah,” Utah’s Jewish History; Ivette D. Isom and Eveline Brooks Auerbach, adapted as “Jewish Pioneers: Julius and Fanny Brooks,” I Love History, Utah Division of State History; “The Auerbachs: Jewish Pioneer Department Store Family of Salt Lake City, Utah,” Jewish Museum of the American West; Jack Goodman, “Jews in Zion,” Utah History to Go: The Peoples of Utah; “Brooks Arcade,” National Register of Historic Places in Salt Lake County; “Herbert Watters (1880–1893),” “Seward Watters (1887–1893),” and “Florence Watters (1890-1893),” Find-A-Grave; “Emanuel Kahn,” obituary, Salt Lake Herald, 5 Feb 1905, 2.4, and “City and Neighborhood,” obituary, Intermountain Catholic, 4 Feb 1905, 8, Chronicling America; “Gumpert Goldberg,” community trees, FamilySearch; “Simon Bamberger” and “Samuel Newhouse,” Wikipedia; and Ardis E. Parshall, “Emo’s Grave? No, It’s the Resting Place of Master Brewer Jacob Moritz,” Salt Lake Tribune, 10 Jul 2009, Salt Lake Tribune Online.

Edwin D. Woolley, came with his family to Utah late in 1848. He was known as a good manager and businessman, as well as a faithful Saint, and spent many years as the bishop of the Salt Lake Thirteenth Ward in the heart of Salt Lake City. Edwin operated both as manager of the first tithing store in Salt Lake and as proprietor of his own retail store located in the same building. Separate records were kept of the business of the two stores.Necessity required early Utah settlers to manage a barter economy. Little hard cash or gold circulated in the Salt Lake Valley during the first decade of settlement. When a woman needed to obtain spices, she might bring a dozen eggs to the store to trade for the needed spice. If a cooking pot was needed, a home-made wooden chair might be offered as barter. This required the store to be able to receive articles and keep produce of varying sizes and quantities, as well as to accept small and large livestock in payment for purchases. The selection of goods for sale was very limited, and higher quality goods were often in demand but unavailable. Woolley’s store was known for selling at “church prices,” meaning fair prices. NonMormon retailers often set higher prices as they sought to make a profit or because they offered a larger or higher quality assortment of merchandise.EdwinWoolley was not immune to trying to satisfy his customers’ demands. It is reported that when he received a bolt of black suit cloth in his dry goods shipment from St. Louis, he cut the bolt of fabric in half, and placed one of the partial bolts in the front of the store with a sign that read “Our best suit cloth—$2.00 yard.” The other half of the bolt was placed at the back of the store with a sign reading “Suit cloth—$1.00 yard.” The “best” suit cloth always sold out first.

A Pioneer Mormon Retailer

by SUSAN LOFGREN Three brothers—Frederick, Samuel H., and Theodore Auerbach from Prussia—sought their fame and fortune along with many others in the California Gold Rush. Their first store was a tent at Rabbit Creek, a “mushroom” mining town in California, where merchandise could be brought in only on muleback. They remained in California until 1863 and then moved to Austin, Nevada, where another mining boom was in progress. In 1864 Frederick arrived in Salt Lake City with a wagonload of merchandise and called upon Brigham Young, asking about the possibility of renting a small adobe cabin on the west side of Main Street, just below First South Street, which was then occupied temporarily by a carpenter shop. President Young visited the carpenter and said, “Brother Stephens, build yourself a shop in the back of the yard. Fred Auerbach is going to open a store in this cabin.”1

The Auerbach brothers’ general store prospered from this inauspicious moment forward. Changing the size and location of their business several times, they ended up on Main Street after purchasing a large and inviting piece of property there. And after the coming of the railroad, they also opened stories in Promontory and Ogden, Utah, and Bryan, Wyoming. From the Salt Lake headquarters, salesSTORE

THE PEOPLE’S

Fred employed this same carpenter to build a counter and some shelving from the wooden packing cases that had held Fred’s stock of merchandise. In a few days Fred secured above the door a crudely made sign which read, “The People’s Store, F. Auerbach & Bros.”—and the first Salt Lake Auerbach’s store was open for business.2

“In the days of the 1860s storekeeping began as early as six-thirty and ended long after midnight. The morning routine included sweeping out the store and cleaning, filling and trimming the wick of the single hanging lamp. Then merchandise was displayed, on the sidewalk in front of the store. . . .

“In front of the shop, prospectors would tie up their pack mules to hitching posts, and bring in gold dust to exchange for provisions, blankets, clothes, blasting powder, and tools. Miners purchased their supplies, and trappers dropped off stacks of fur pelts and buckskins to exchange.

“The newest and most appealing merchandise was put outside on the street to stop passersby. In 1869, long tin bathtubs, shaped to fit the body, were introduced. There men traveled throughout Utah and Idaho in buckboards, and by 1883 the Auerbachs’ business was grossing a halfmillion dollars a year.3 Although some of the brothers’ merchandise was purchased in San Francisco, most of the goods came overland from St. Louis and farther East. Trappers and Indians brought in furs and hides to trade: thousands of skins of deer, elk, beaver, mink, marten, fox, wolf, cougar, lynx, otter, bear, and buffalo.4 Shortly after the Auerbachs’ business opened, the bishop of a Salt Lake ward appeared at their counter to request a contribution of a few bottles of medicine to help the many ill members of his ward. Fred quietly gave the anxious bishop their entire stock of remedies. Sometime later, Brigham Young learned of this contribution and was so gratified that he paid the store a visit to thank Fred personally. Young told Fred that he had given orders that Auerbachs’ could now redeem LDS Church tithing scrip at face value—the only non-Mormon firm to whom this unusual privilege was granted.5

“Cows, horses and pigs roamed at random along the streets and sidewalks, often damaging fences and gardens. Main Street was a favorite playground for horses, cows, pigs, and dogs, while chickens came from coops located blocks away that they might make merry in the deep dust of Main Street. During the summer the dust was very deep. When herds of cattle were driven along Main Street, [merchants] were forced to close windows and doors to prevent merchandise from being ruined by the dust.

Eileen Stone describes more of the Auerbachs’—and other merchants’—experiences during their early years in the Valley: “When customers or friends came in from out of town, it was customary to permit them to sleep in the aisles or on the counters. Blankets would be taken out of the stock, and the customers would roll themselves in these blankets and sleep. The next morning, after the out-oftowners had arisen, the blankets would be placed back in stock. Most of the people slept in their boots, and some of them did not remove any part of their outer clothing.”6 “In the 1860s there were no paved streets or sidewalks. The sidewalks at times became so muddy, merchants laid a plank or two along the walk-in front of their shop and ... if one stepped off this planking, they would sink into mud over their shoe tops. . . . Deep ditches were at the sidewalk’s edge on either side of Main Street and were filled with water from City Creek. . . .

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“F. Auerbach & Bros carried all kinds of groceries, sacks of flour and grains, coffee, tea, sugar, spices . . . common drugs and medicines. In corners and on floor displays, on shelves, in cases, and on countertops were boots and shoes, stoves, farming tools and miners’ equipment, crockery and glassware, eating utensils, pots and pans, hardware, coal oil, wallpaper, towels, soaps, ropes and twine, wood, saws, shovels, buckets and brooms, jewelry and notions, tapes, ribbons, buttons, needles and threads, men’s readywear clothes and furnishings, cloth, ticking for mattresses and pillows, [and] unbleached muslin for sheets. . . .

was no plumbing attached to the tub, no running water, and no outlet for used water, but the tub represented such an advance over the washtub placed in front of the kitchen stove that the item created quite a sensation.”7

Gentile Merchants React to Trade Embargo In 1865, when Church leaders requested the Saints to do business only with fellow Saints, Gentiles feared not only for their future as merchants but also for their personal security as residents of the Territory.8 Historian Orson F. Whitney wrote of this period: “Much bitterness of feeling was now manifested between the two classes of the community. Many Gentiles persisted in the belief . . . that the purpose of the Mormons was to compel them to leave the Territory. . . . This, the Mormons indignantly denied. . . . That there were a class of men in the Territory whom the Saints regarded as enemies, and did not care how soon they departed, was admitted. . . . It is true however, that so far as that particular class was concerned, the Saints, or their leaders, had hit upon a plan which they hoped would have the effect of weakening if not dissolving what they deemed an organized opposition to the peace and welfare of the community. It was to boycott such of the Gentile merchants

“Respectfully Yours, Walker Bros.; Gilbert &. Sons; Bodenburg &. Kahn; Wm. Sloan; C. Prag of the firm of Ransohoff & Co.; Ellis Bros, by J. M. Ellis; J. Meeks; McGrorty &. Henry; Siegel Bros.; F. Auerbach &. Bros.; L. Cohn & Co.; Oliver Durant; Klopstock &. Co.; S. Lesser & Bros.; Glucksman & Cohn; John H. McGrath; Morse, Walcott & Co.; Wilkinson &. Fenn; J. Bauman &. Co.; I. Watters; Morris Elgutter; M. B. Callahan; Thomas D. Brown &. Sons. Great Salt Lake City, Dec. 20, 1866”10

President Young replied immediately the next day: “Gentlemen: Your communication of December 20th, addressed to ‘The Leaders of the Mormon Church’ was received by me last evening. In reply, I have to say that we will

“There is a class, however, who are doing business in the Territory, who for many years have been the avowed enemies of this community. The disrupture and overthrow and traders as, it was believed, were conspiring against the best interests of the people.”9 Seeking resolution to the existing tensions and bitterness, an entire group of merchants proposed to leave and sent the following petition to the leaders of the Church:

54 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER not obligate ourselves to collect your outstanding accounts, nor buy your goods, merchandise and other articles that you express your willingness to sell. If you could make such sales as you propose, you would make more money than any merchants have ever done in this country and we, as merchants, would like to find purchasers upon the same basis.

“In the first place, we wish you to distinctly understand that we have not sought to ostracize any man or body of men because of their not being of our faith. The wealth that has been accumulated in this Territory from the earliest years of our settlement by men who were not connected with us religiously, and the success which has attended their business operations prove this: In business we have not been exclusive in our dealings, or confined our patronage to those of our own faith. But every man who has dealt fairly and honestly, and confined his attention to his legitimate business, whatever his creed has been, has found friendship in us. To be adverse to Gentiles because they are Gentiles, or Jews because they are Jews, is in direct opposition to the genius of our religion. It matters not what a man’s creed is, whether he be Catholic, or Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Quaker or Jew, he will receive kindness and friendship from us, and we have not the least objection to doing business with him; if, in his dealings he act in accordance with the principles of right and deport himself as a good, law abiding citizen should.

“Your withdrawal from the Territory is not a matter about which we feel any anxiety; so far as we are concerned, you are at liberty to stay or go, as you please. We have used no intimidation or coercion toward the community to have them cease trading with any person or class, neither do we contemplate using any such means, even could we do so, to accomplish such an end. What we are doing and intending to do, we are willing that you and all the world should know.

“Gentlemen: As you are instructing the people of Utah through your Bishops and missionaries not to trade or do any business with the Gentile merchants, thereby intimidating and coercing the community to purchase only of such merchants as belong to your faith and persuasion, in anticipation of such a crisis being successfully brought about by your teachings, the undersigned Gentile merchants of Great Salt Lake City respectfully desire to make you the following proposition, believing it to be your earnest desire for all to leave the country who do not belong to your faith and creed, namely: On fulfillment of the conditions herein named: First—The payment of our outstanding accounts owing us by members of your church; Secondly—All of our goods, merchandise, chattels, houses, improvements, etc., to be taken at cash valuation, and we make a deduction of twenty-five per cent from the total amount. To the fulfillment of the above we hold ourselves ready at any time to enter into negotiations, and on final arrangements being made and terms of sale complied with, we shall freely leave the Territory.

of the community have been the objects which they have pertinaciously sought to accomplish. They have, therefore, used every energy and all the means at their command to put into circulation the foulest slanders about the old citizens. Missionaries of evil, they have no arts too base, no stratagems too vile for them to use to bring about their nefarious ends. While soliciting the patronage of the people and deriving their support from them, they have in the most shameless and abandoned manner used the means thus obtained to destroy the very people whose favor they found it to their interest to court. With the regularity of the seasons have their plots and schemes been formed; and we are warranted by fact, in saying that, could the heart’s blood of the people here be drawn, and could be coined into the means necessary to bring their machinations to a successful issue, they would not scruple to use it. They have done all in their power to encourage violations of law, to retard the administration of justice, to foster vice and vicious institutions, to oppose the unanimously expressed will of the people, to increase disorder, and change our city from a condition of peace and quietude to lawlessness and anarchy. They have donated liberally to sustain a corrupt and venal press, which has given publicity to the most atrocious libels

indepartmentoffoundersAuerbachsstoreSaltLakeCity. His mother’s family were also pioneer settlers of Utah. Herbert was educated in Utah schools until 1897 and then went to Germany to further his education. After studying in schools of science in Wiesbaden, he later moved to Lausanne, Switzerland, where he graduated from the Conservatory of Music. He toured Europe as a violinist for a time, and

TO

THE Auerbach

United States bind us to enter the stores of our deadliest enemies and purchase of them? If so, we would like that provision pointed out to us. It is to these men whom I have described, and to these alone, that I am opposed, and I am determined to use my influence to have the citizens here stop dealing with them and deal with honorable men. There are honorable men enough in the world with whom we can do business, without being reduced to dealing with the class referred to. I have much more to say upon this subject.”

Brigham YoungGreat Salt Lake City, Dec. 21st, 1866”11 respecting the old citizens. And have they not had their emissaries in Washington to misrepresent and vilify the people of this Territory? Have they not kept liquor, and surreptitiously sold it in violation of law and endeavored to bias the minds of the Judiciary to give decisions favorable to their own “Whatpractices?claims can such persons have upon the patronage of this community, and what community on earth would be so besotted as to uphold and foster men whose aim is to destroy them? Have we not the right to trade at whatever store we please, or does the Constitution of the then returned to the United States where he entered Columbia University. He graduated from Columbia’s School of Mines in 1906 with a master’s degree in metallurgy. Herbert worked as a consulting engineer for various mining interests in Colorado and Idaho until 1911.

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Frederick Auerbach passed away in 1896, and Herbert’s father, Samuel, retired as president of the family businesses in 1909. Herbert’s younger brothers, George and Frederick, assumed the management of the family businesses in retailing and real estate. In 1911 Herbert rejoined the Auerbach company, and eventually became its president. The department store moved to a larger building on the corner of State Street and 300 South under Herbert’s Herbert S. Auerbach, a member of a noted Utah Jewish family, served as National President of the Sons of Utah Pioneers in 1938 after holding the position of vice president for two years. Born in 1882 in Salt Lake City, he was the oldest of three sons and four daughters of Samuel H. Auerbach and his wife, Eveline Brooks Auerbach. Herbert’s uncle, Frederick, and his father, Samuel, were pioneer merchants of the West and the Connection THE SONS OF UTAH PIONEERS

For Gentile merchants the immediate effect of the boycott was disastrous. The sales of Walker Brothers decreased from $60,000 a month to $5,000; those of the Auerbachs and other Jewish merchants suffered a similarly precipitous decline.12 The homes Fannie Brooks rented to Mormon tenants were instantly vacated.

Herbert resigned his business interests and at the age of thirty-five enlisted in the US Army. He served as a major in the Ordnance Department until 1919. Returning to Utah, he became involved in many civic and service organizations, including Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, the Alta Club and the Sons of Utah Pioneers. He served in the Utah State legislature, and was a board member of the Metropolitan Water District in Salt Lake City and the Colorado River Basin Water Users Association. From 1936 until his death, Herbert Auerbach was president of the Utah State Historical Society. His pioneering father and uncle had fascinated Herbert with stories of their adventures in California, Nevada and Utah during the 1850s and 1860s. He developed a great interest in western history and collected many valuable manuscripts, maps, photographs and books detailing the history of the West. He also acquired many items of furniture and personal belongings of Joseph Smith and his family that were often exhibited at the Auerbachs store. The collection was donated to the LDS HerbertChurch.wrotepoetry. He translated the journal of Father Escalante’s travels through the Great Basin. He even collaborated with Mormon Tabernacle Choir director Anthony C. Lund in the writing of ballads and hymns. Two of these were included in Hymns: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (1948). Aided by the resources of the Auerbachs store, Herbert was responsible for the popular Old Folks Day held annually at Salt Lake City’s Liberty Park in honor of the founding settlers of the Salt Lake Valley. Herbert Auerbach died in 1945 at age 62 after a brief illness. His funeral was held in the Assembly Hall on Temple Square and was open to everyone, regardless of their religion. Jessie Evans Smith, wife of Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith, sang a song written by Auerbach, “To Every Heart Must Come Some Sorrow.” His Rabbi was quoted as saying that Herbert Auerbach was committed to “those things which unite men, rather than the differences which break them up into sects.”

Stone further details how the Auerbach brothers responded to this situation: “[The Auerbachs] had many good friends among the Mormons, as well as among the nonMormons, and had established a reputation for fair dealing and for selling at lower prices than many other merchants. leadership. He also designed and built the Centre Theatre on the northeast corner of the same intersection.In1917

Source: J. Cecil Alter, “In Memoriam, Herbert S. Auerbach, 1882-1945,” Utah Historical Quarterly 13 (1945). deseret views

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Many of the smaller gentile firms moved to the newly established city of Corinne or left the Territory permanently. By 1869, those who remained were ultimately able to regain a fair share of their former volume due to the increase of the gentile population through the development of the mines and the railroads. Of the Jewish merchants, the Auerbachs, the Kahns, the Siegels, the Cohns, the Brookses, and the Watters brothers survived the boycott.

A later incident noted by Stone also demonstrates the friendship between Brigham Young and the Auerbach brothers: “One morning early in 1872, Brigham Young came into the store. Fred and [Samuel] were in the office. President Young said he had come to see [them] on a matter of finance, and asked if [they] could loan him $20,000 for fourteen days. [The brothers] immediately replied [they] would be glad to do so, and after fourteen days, President Young repaid the loan. [Brigham] offered to pay interest, but [they] refused to accept any interest. [They] did think it rather strange that President Young should borrow money from [them], because he was reputed to be very wealthy and to have at all times great sums of cash on hand.”15

Eventually conditions changed, and the prohibition against Mormon-Gentile trading ultimately relaxed. And in the mercantile affairs of the valley, both the wealth and influence of the Auerbachs and other Jewish merchants resumed.16TheAuerbach Company became one of the oldest and most successful department stores in the country under the ownership and management of one family. After 114 years in the retail industry, the downtown store at State Street and Broadway closed its doors on February 3, 1979.17

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“It became necessary for [their] Mormon customers to come at night by way of the back entrance in order to make their purchases secretly, for they dared not be seen by the spies of the Church. In shipping their goods, [they] disguised the cases and were extremely careful to obliterate the name ‘Auerbach &. Bros.,’ or any other marking that would enable someone to trace the origin of the cases. If Mormon customers purchased smaller items, some of them used what was called ‘Mormon Suitcases.’ Actually, these were sugar sacks or flour sacks, which they carried in their pockets filled with their purchases, and slung over their back before starting for home.”13

Fred Auerbach, Fannie Brooks, and other merchants individually met with President Young about what they perceived to be an unbearable situation, and again proposed that Church members buy their property so they could comfortably leave the city. Young responded to many of these visits encouragingly, and proposed alternative solutions. Young told Fred, for example, that the Auerbachs had always been good friends of the Mormons and that he did not want them to leave. Following Brigham Young’s avowal of friendship, the Auerbachs, the Brookses, and several others remained in the valley and gradually regained their Mormon customers.14

59PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 1 Cited in Eileen Hallet Stone, A Homeland in the West: Utah Jews Remember (2001), 77. 2 Leon L. Watters, The Pioneer Jews of Utah (1952), 131. 3 Watters 132. 4 Stone 79. 5 Stone 80. 6 Ibid. 7 Stone 78–83. 8 Watters 47. 9 Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah (1892–1904), 2:143–44; also cited in Watters 48. 10 Whitney, 2:164–65; cited in Watters 48–49. 11 Whitney, 2:165–67; cited in Watters 50–52. 12 Watters 58. 13 Stone 84. 14 Rochelle Kaplan, “The Earliest Utah Jews,”  Utah’s Jewish History, 15online.Stone 87–88. 16 Deseret News, 20 Jul 1935. 17 Salt Lake Tribune, 7 Jan 1979.

60 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER Fred KieselJ. PHOTO TINTING BY SUSAN LOFGREN

ambition.”andexecutivegreatofpush,abilitycommercial

FRONTIER ENTREPRENEUR, INVESTOR AND POLITICIAN by Robert folkman For more than seventy-five years, Ogden was the transportation and distribution center for not only Utah but for much of the intermountain west, and boasted of the largest railroad yards between the Pacific Coast and Omaha. From the arrival of the railroad in the 1870s to the opening of important military bases prior to World War II, most of the manufactured goods, agricultural products and people passing in and out of Utah made a stop in Ogden, the Junction City. For the first forty of those important Ogden years, German immigrant and entrepreneur Fred J. Kiesel often had a hand in what was happening.

61PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4

—Utah historian Edward J. Tullidge The Battle of Shiloh under General Albert Sidney Johnston man

“

Kiesel’s goal was “simply to be known in history as a successful merchant of recognized integrity of character.”

A

Born Friedrich Johann Kiesel on May 19, 1841 in the independent German state of Wurttemberg, Kiesel received a Lutheran education in Ludwigsburg, where his father owned a large shoe manufacturing shop. The Kiesel ancestry was Jewish, but Friedrich’s mother and sisters were Lutheran and attentive to their beliefs. While Kiesel himself expressed few religious opinions during his life, his 1919 obituary in a Salt Lake newspaper noted his Lutheran ed to fiingand hetediousapprenticedWhen Kieselmembership.1turnedfourteen hewithanengraver,but thework didnotmatchhis energydidnotcareforhis demand-master. Aftertwo years he want-nd hisown future, andhe made

the first of many life-changing decisions that would follow. He booked passage on the impulsivein a postTennessee,andthatployment. He soon madehisingsailed to America inship Rattler andearly1857, land-in NewYorkCity wherehe usedskills asanengraverto findem-connectionstookhimto other jobsin OhioMichigan,andthentoMemphis,where heworkedasaclerkoffice. In1861FredKieselmadeanotherdecisionandjoinedthe

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Confederate Army at the beginning of the Civil War, serving with the Tennessee 4th Infantry Regiment.2 He served a oneyear term of enlistment, participating in the Battle of Shiloh under General Albert Sidney Johnston of Utah War fame. Not finding military life to his liking, Kiesel next went to St. Louis where he found work as a clerk for a dry goods retailer. After a short time he was recruited by a large wholesaler3 whose clients included several Utah merchants. During this time, Mr. Robert Sharkey of Salt Lake City entrusted Kiesel with a tin box filled with gold dust, and told Fred about the 1862 gold rush in Montana that was its source. Sharkey explained that the commerce to and from Montana must pass through Utah, and there was opportunity for an ambitious young man. The untethered German youth again seized the moment and hired on as a teamster for a wagon train bound for Utah. Twenty-two years old and showing no inclination to settle down, Kiesel took employment in Salt Lake City with Abel Gilbert & Sons, a pioneer merchant in the Utah territory. Gilbert placed Kiesel in charge of a new sutler’s store4 at Ft. Connor near Soda Springs, Idaho. When the store was sold the next spring, Kiesel returned to Gilbert in Salt Lake City, but within a few months he took a load of merchandise to Manti and opened a store there. After selling that business a year later, Kiesel opened a large store in Wellsville for Gilbert. A competitor quickly bought out the store. Again seeing an opportunity, Keisel purchased more merchandise from Gilbert and returned to Wellsville, where he sold out that shipment to another aspiring merchant. The pattern was now set. Fred J. Kiesel had harnessed his natural ability to network, and learned how to accumulate capital from buying and selling. He carefully maintained a good reputation that facilitated partnerships and favorable business terms. With no family to encumber him, he had few expenses, and no fear of changing the direction of his life on a moment’s notice. Now he was constantly on the road, taking orders for the Gilbert firm or for himself as opportunity arose. He and Gilbert established a new store in Ogden, which was then a small agricultural community, and in 1867 Fred purchased an inventory of general merchandise from Gilbert and opened a store at Paris, Idaho with a branch at Montpelier. In August 1869 unknown persons shot and killed his clerk in Montpelier, a German named Fred Woesner.5 Authorities never solved the murder. Because of the inCorinne was established as nevergrowthopment,plansDespiteinfluencedominatetoment,“Gentile”anti-Mormonanorsettle-determinedovercomethereligiousinUtah.thrivingofdevel-lastinginCorinneoccurred.

Albert Henry’s first business endeavor had not gone well while Fred was away. Shortly after his return to the US, he began to run ads in a Corinne newspaper declaring that the Fred J. Kiesel Co. would promptly settle any debts still owed by Albert Henry’s business. Albert eventually opened a successful bakery in Ogden near the Union Station that became wellknown for its German baked goods. Fred made a partnership with the experienced Jewish merchant Gumpert Goldberg in Corinne and opened a wholesale, retail and forwarding business under the name of Fred J. Kiesel Co. The business thrived in the bustling railroad town and gentile business mecca. Goldberg ran the business and Kiesel traveled, taking orders and making contacts throughout the area. In 1874, with the decline of Corinne becoming clear, the partners moved their wholesale operation to Ogden, leaving only their freight forwarding business in Corinne. In 1879 Fred Kiesel made another unexpected decision and sold all his Utah businesses to Goldberg, and also sold a Montana bank he owned. He moved to Toledo, Ohio, where he engaged in a grocery enterprise with his wife’s brother, William Schansenbach. William and other members of his family had been in Toledo since 1855. But one “Julius C . Kiesel came to Ogden from Germany in the 1870s, where his brother Fred Kiesel had also settled. Julius quickly opened a bakery and became known as a first-class baker. His wedding cakes were very popular and many commented on the artistry of his creations. Kiesel’s baked goods were also sold in local grocery stores . . . F. D. Higginbotham’s grocery store and Kiesel’s California Bakery Depot.”

See Sarah Langsdon, Melissa Johnson, Legendary Locals of Ogden, (2012), 25.

63PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 creasingly heated rivalry between Mormon merchants and their gentile competitors, the rumor spread through Utah that Mormons killed Woesner as punishment for competing against Mormon-owned businesses. Proponents of this charge claimed that Woesner was an apostate Mormon, but Kiesel asserted that his clerk was a faithful member of the LDS Church who had told Kiesel he would quit his job if requested by his leaders. In an effort to dampen the heated feelings, Kiesel sent a letter to Charles C. Rich that was passed on to the Deseret News and published in January 1870. In the letter, Kiesel declared that he was satisfied that the killing was a robbery and had no other connection.6 Kiesel opened and sold businesses in Ophir, Bingham and Echo in the next few years. His younger brother Albert Henry Kiesel came to Utah with hopes of following in Fred’s footsteps, and opened a business in Corinne with his brother’s help. In 1872, Fred, now 31 years old, suddenly decided the time was right to settle down. He sold all of his business interests and returned to Europe for several months. When he came back to the US in 1873 he had his new bride with him, Julia Schansenbach, the sister of Albert Henry’s wife Emelia. In the next three years Fred and Julia would have two children, Fred William Kiesel and Wilhelmina (Minnie).

Fred J. Kiesel & Co. sold wholesale grocery goods to stores along the expanding railroad routes in Utah, Idaho and Oregon. The 1880s were exciting times in Ogden, as the city grew in size and importance as the center of railroad transportation in Utah and the West. By the late 1880s the Kiesel company was the largest grocery wholesaler in the territory with sales of more than $1,000,000. Only ZCMI exceeded the Fred J. Kiesel Company in importance as a distributor and retailer in the territory. Kiesel had long been concerned about the LDS Church’s involvement in business and government affairs in Utah. He became active in politics as a member of the Liberal

Kiesel’s investment capital benefited many local business enterprises, including the Amalgamated Sugar Company.

In 1889 Ogden voters finally elected Kiesel as the first nonLDS mayor of Ogden along with an entirely Liberal Party city council.7 One might have expected this transfer of power from the LDS community to non-Mormons would result in disruption and turmoil in local affairs, but in Ogden it didn’t happen. At the first meeting of the new city council David Eccles, the LDS incumbent, called for three cheers for Mayor-elect Kiesel and the new council members. Kiesel returned the favor and requested three cheers for the outgoing leaders. Such demonstrations of good will were less common in other Utah localities.

64 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER Party when it organized in Corinne, and he continued with that party as a resident of Ogden. Non-Mormons made up most of the party’s leadership and supporters. The People’s Party, dominated by the LDS community, had controlled the politics and elective offices in Ogden for many years. However, the US government was now exerting pressure against polygamous LDS leaders who held public offices, a situation made illegal by the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1884.

In 1885 Fred Kiesel ran for mayor of Ogden against David Peery, and lost by only a few hundred votes. In 1887 he ran again, and lost to David Eccles by a smaller margin.

Kiesel had already determined that his primary objective as mayor would be the separation of church and state in Ogden, and he used relatively gentle methods to accomplish that. A good example is the renaming of Ogden’s city streets. Prior to 1889, the names of north-south streets in Ogden included familiar LDS names, such as Franklin, Young and Smith. Kiesel renamed the north-south streets for the presidents of the United States, replacing Main with Washington, and proceeding east with subsequent presidents Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Quincy and so on. On the west side of Washington were Lincoln and Grant. Only Wall Avenue, running parallel to the railroad tracks for most of its way retained its name. He renumbered the east-west streets, as well, and Ogden’s infamous year later Goldberg died. Kiesel and Schansenbach sold the Ohio business and returned to Ogden, where Fred bought back his old business interests from the Goldberg estate and later hired William to help run them. Kiesel would remain an Ogden resident for the rest of his life.

5 Deseret News, “Murder,” 8 September 1869.

Kiesel represented Weber County as a member of the territory’s constitutional convention prior to Utah becoming a state in 1896. He later served two terms in the new Utah State Senate. He remained active in civic organizations in Ogden, and served as president of the local school board. Kiesel’s investment capital benefited many local business enterprises, including the Amalgamated Sugar Company, still the second largest refiner from sugar beets in the US, though no longer headquartered in Ogden. He donated parcels of land in Ogden to encourage the construction of new government and civic buildings. He invested in vineyards in the Sacramento Valley in California, and in Oregon where he also raised prized cattle and horses.

6 Deseret News, “Local and Other Matters,” 5 January 1870.

7 Peterson & Parsons, Ogden City: Its Governmental Legacy (2001). 73.

65PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 Twenty-Fifth Street was born, replacing Fifth Street. This extended the street numbering three miles to the north and eliminated the typical Utah directional street naming within Ogden city limits.8

Fred J. Kiesel actively managed his wholesale business until 1912, seven years before his death at 78. Contemporary Utah historian Edward J. Tullidge described Kiesel as “a man of great push, executive ability and commercial ambition,” and claimed that Kiesel’s own goal was “simply to be known in history as a successful merchant of recognized integrity of character.”9 It appears that in all respects Kiesel accomplished this goal, as his reputation for honesty in his many business dealings is unquestioned in the historical record. Fred J. Kiesel’s life embodied the American dream of its day. He channeled his energy and ingenuity to the betterment of his family and the city and state that he adopted as his home.

1 Salt Lake Herald, “Fred J. Kiesel, Pioneer, Dies,” 23 April 1919.

8 Roberts and Sadler, A History of Weber County (1997). 140.

In 1889 Ogden voters finally elected Friedrich Johann Kiesel as the first non-LDS mayor of Ogden along with an entirely Liberal Party city council.

2 Historical Data Systems, US Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861–1865, Provo, Utah (2009).

9 Edward J. Tullidge, Tullidge’s Histories, Volume II (1889). 246,249.

1901 Legislature photo showing Fred J. Kiesel when he was a Utah Senator.

3 Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah, Volume IV.—Biographies (2004). 629–30.

4 A civilian store operated on an army post for the benefit of the military personnel.

66 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEERBACKGROUND ART: COWS AT EVENING, BY WILLEM MARIS

1868–1999 by martha sonntag bradley When the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints migrated from the Midwest to the Great Basin, the Saints sought both refuge and the prospects of a new life. Two decades after they first descended into the place they would call Salt Lake City, laying out streets and farm fields like an enormous patchwork quilt thrown over the valley, outsiders had joined them. In the beginning these non-Mormons were on their way to somewhere else and came to Utah in search of supplies. Eventually they came to stay, some seeking the riches promised by prospecting for mineral wealth, and others looking to prosper by bringing scarce goods from the States to sell to the isolated settlers.

Zions MercantileCooperativeInstitution

President Brigham Young responded to the competition from “gentile” or outside businesses with a measure intended to protect the economic life of the Latter-day Saints by unification. He proposed a cooperative institution to manufacture and retail the products needed by the Saints.

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Salt Lake City’s Main Street in 1868 reflected the frontier town’s growing economy. Merchants converted homes into storefronts, and new stores, hotels, and banks were built, many owned by non-Mormon entrepreneurs. Stores and services owned by Latter-day Saints—always short on cash and credit—had difficulty competing with the newcomers.

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The Utah War of the late 1850s had reinforced Young’s concern about the Saints’ self-sufficiency. He directed both a boycott against gentile firms in the 1860s, and he regularly preached the importance of supporting Mormon businesses. President Young encouraged home manufacturing and he reiterated the value of cooperation, setting the stage for the organization of Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institute by Brigham Young and a group of general authorities and local LDS businessmen. The Mormon businessmen gathered in Salt Lake City’s Social Hall in October 1868 and drafted a resolution to establish a cooperative wholesale store. They made plans to introduce the concept throughout the Mormon-settled region by selling subscriptions for membership in ZCMI. Brigham Young and apostles Wilford Woodruff, George Q. Cannon, and others expounded on the benefits of this shared enterprise where even the most-humble farmer could pay for shares with his produce and become a member of the enterprise. The cooperative was a way to bolster the economic strength of the Church and at the same time to make a broader range of products available from national markets. Horace Eldredge chaired the meeting at which the Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution was formally organized on October 15th. The new co-op’s strategy focused on identifying LDS merchants who would be willing to sell their businesses to form

69PIONEER 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 the corpus of the venture and how to expand the network of cooperatives throughout the territory. Each of the founding members present that day committed financially to ZCMI and to the idea that they would sell goods for affordable prices and share the profits among the members. While ZCMI was known as the “People’s Store,” Section 20 of its bill of incorporation set some restrictions on who could participate: “No person or persons shall be eligible for membership, except they be of good moral character and have paid their tithing according to the rules of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”1 Over the next year several merchants added the inventories of their own stores to the co-op. Salt Lake merchant William Jennings put his entire stock into the institution, an investment of $75,000. Horace Eldredge and Hiram B. Clawson followed suit. The gathering of these “inventories,” the equivalent of departments, made ZCMI one of the nation’s first department stores. In 1868, ZCMI’s headquarters was in the Eagle Emporium building with “departments” located in small false front stores along Main Street. ZCMI’s logo was displayed proudly across the fronts of stores that had joined the association—a rectangle with an arch at the top. The words “Holiness to the Lord” followed the curve of the arch at the top with an all-seeing eye beneath. Zion’s Co-operative Mercantile Institution was prominently lettered below the logo, marking the business as one contributing to the strength of the Church and its people. Shopping there became a badge of honor—a symbol of loyalty to the Church and the larger mission of supporting home manufacturing, self-sufficiency and the good moral values promoted by the Church. These signs drew a type of line in the sand, identifying insiders and outsiders with a clear legible message about the economic battle playing out on the dusty streets of Salt Lake City and towns throughout the region.

ZCMI cooperatives were organized not only in Utah Territory’s larger cities but in small towns from the north to the south. These appendant ZCMIs sold locally produced goods as well as “states goods” brought to Utah on the railroad. Within a decade after it began, ZCMI included 146 co-ops in 126 different settlements in the territory. By the beginning of the twentieth century, most of the local co-ops had closed down. Some were sold and others repurposed, and some persisted until the Great Depression.

ZCMI expanded its business into the production of special goods sold at its main store and distributed to local co-ops. The ZCMI clothing factory and shoe factory produced overalls and “all unders,” shoes, and boots. Most importantly, these enterprises created a degree of independence for the Saints by reducing the need to rely on outside markets for these basic goods. Brigham Young believed that home manufacture was the key to economic self-sufficiency and independence for the Church and its people. Not quite a decade after ZCMI was organized, the department store constructed a new headquarters store on Main Street in 1876, bringing its associated businesses under the same roof. Designed in 1876 by Obed Taylor and William Folsom, the new building had a cast-iron front that spanned seven bays originally, and after additions in 1880 and 1901, twenty-three bays. Cast-iron facades were first used

During the nineteenth century the ZCMI company evolved a highly effective organizational structure. Although the company’s interests were often intertwined with the LDS Church’s interests, and the president of the Church and other general authorities oversaw the company and made important financial decisions, ZCMI demonstrated the ability to prosper independently. Good business practices, the professionalization of its management, and the gradual secularization of the company mirrored changes in the Church and in Utah as the state achievedZCMIstatehood.beganwith its main retail store in Salt Lake City and a network of associated manufacturing industries and local cooperatives in the nineteenth century. In the first half of the twentieth century the supporting network disappeared, but wholesale divisions continued successfully along with the flagship store on Main Street. In the second half of the twentieth century the retail division Isaac Smith’s ZCMI store in Logan, Utah (see Pioneer Vignette). expanded to include as many as twenty department stores located in Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and Nevada with total sales of $200 million annually. Through years of growth as a department store chain, it kept up with national trends and sometimes innovated on its own. When elevators became popular in buildings in the Eastern US, ZCMI installed one of its own. The company was the first institution in the West to employ female clerks and the first in Salt Lake City to do home delivery—initially with horse-drawn wagons and later with a motorized fleet. In 1946, it added the first escalators west of the Mississippi River. When the ZCMI was sold to the May Company in 1999, it was the end of an era, a story inextricably linked to that of the settlement, growth and development of the State of Utah. After a “facadectomy” in the mid-1970s and the construction of the City Creek Development in 2013, all that remains of the historic ZCMI building is the beautiful restored cast-iron façade, a faint reminder of a community landmark and institution—the “People’s Store.”

1 Quoted in Martha Sonntag Bradley, ZCMI: America’s First Department Store, (1991), 19.

70 2017 VOLUME 64 NO 4 PIONEER in the United States in the early 1840s and became particularly popular in densely built commercial cities like Chicago and New York. Folsom and Taylor traveled widely to become familiar with the technology described by one architectural historian as “architectural sculpture.” Besides adding strength to the building’s masonry and its bearing walls on the sides and back, the cast-iron facade opened the front of the building to allow the addition of large windows for the display of merchandise and to let light into the building’s interior and office spaces. Decorative moldings surrounded the windows and doors, and an iconic triangular pediment was placed at the top of the storefront.

Martha Sonntag Bradley, ZCMI, America’s First Department Store (1991); Martha Sonntag Bradley, “Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution,” in Allan Kent Powell, Utah History Encyclopedia (1994).

“When it comes to honorable living, no man ever breathed that lived the life of a Latter-day Saint more than this man.” —Dr. W. B. Parkinson, companion in the British mission, 1879.2 1 Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia: A Compilation of Biographical Sketches of Prominent Men and Women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (1901), 410-411.2”FineTribute Paid Memory of President Smith,” The Logan Republican, April 2, 1914.

pioneer vignette ISAAC SMITH, son of Samuel Smith and Sarah Jane Ingraham, “was born December 31, 1858, in Brigham City, Box Elder county, Utah. His father was a native of London, and his mother of Worcester, England. . . . At the age of fourteen he had pretty well mastered the cabinetmaker’s trade. . . . [In the] fall of 1876 . . . he went to Salt Lake City to attend the University. . . . He worked at the B. C. Co-op steam mill, shipping lumber and keeping books. . . . “December 28, 1877, he married Harriet Camilla Ensign, daughter of M. L. Ensign and Mary Dunn. At the April conference, 1878, he was called on a mission to Great Britain, and departed on the same May 5th . . . [returning] April 10, 1880. In the spring of 1881 he removed from Brigham City to Logan, to clerk in the wholesale department of ZCMI. “June 5, 1884, when the Logan First Ward was divided into three Wards, Isaac Smith was appointed Bishop of the Seventh Ward. . . . “During his labors with the ZCMI, Elder Smith was invoice clerk, had charge of the grocery, hardware and crockery departments and later the clothing department. He was on the road as general salesman for about five years, after which he ran a branch store for the institution on Main Street, Logan. August 3, 1890, he was sustained as second counselor to Orson Smith, president of the Cache Stake. . . .

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“In February, 1891, he was given the management of the Logan branch of ZCMI, which position he held until the institution closed out its business in 1897.”1 Isaac died March 30, 1914 in Logan, Utah.

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President Grant persisted with his request because he knew that R.W. Madsen had solid financial credentials and had demonstrated a genius for retail merchandising. He had operated his father’s furniture business with great success, but he longed to run his own business. In 1909 with money borrowed from his wife, Mary Hannah Armstrong, and her brother, along with other investors, R.W. started Standard Furniture Company. By 1911 he had won the contract for furnishing the Newhouse Utah building (over his father’s bid), and he was off and running. R.W.’s new furniture business was

Saving DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION After weathering the severe financial storm that followed World War I, ZCMI struggled to survive the Great Depression of the late 1920s and 1930s. How ZCMI did survive and continue in business for another 65 years is an interesting facet of its long history. A wild splurge of optimism and speculative spending in the mid to late 1920s caused nationwide business activities to skyrocket, only to have the market crash in 1929 and almost destroy both national and local economies. In this environment all types of businesses were severely and often mortally wounded. ZCMI’s sales sharply declined, as did the sales of many other businesses in Salt Lake City and throughout Utah. In 1933, ZCMI lost $300,000, which was a truly catastrophic loss that the company could not absorb. In these circumstances, President Heber J. Grant of the LDS Church called on his personal friend, Richard William (R.W.) Madsen, to literally save ZCMI. R.W. was already trying to save his own business, Standard Furniture Company, located just north of ZCMI on Main Street. He told President Grant that he just could not take on the additional responsibility of ZCMI under the dire circumstances that his own company and the rest of the country were facing.

by frank madsen

RETIRED TEACHER FROM BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY, SEE MORE OF RICHARD’S AWARD WINNING ARTWORK AT RICHARDHULLART.COM

ART

Sources: Martha Sonntag Bradley, ZCMI— America’s First Department Store (1991); and personal reminiscences of R.W. Madsen and his youngest son, Francis Armstrong Madsen, the author of this article. dynamic and innovative. His merchandising inspired customers, and he introduced the concept of encouraging customers to buy on credit with weekly or monthly payments. The business grew like wildfire. By 1928 he was selling more furniture per square foot of merchandising space than any other dealer in America. Coupled with his success in retailing was his ownership in banks, real estate, houses, and many other pursuits. BY RICHARD HULL.

President Grant knew R.W.’s history intimately and felt he was perhaps the only one who could “save” ZCMI. He suggested that R.W. regard this as a “call” from the Church, and R.W. finally consented after President Grant agreed that Madsen could manage both ZCMI and his own business as well. In October 1933 R.W. took over as the manager of ZCMI and began applying his proven merchandising skills. Instead of the $300,000 loss in 1933, ZCMI made $300,000 in 1934 during the very depth of the Depression. From that point until the late 1990s ZCMI thrived as the premier retailing brand in Utah and eastern Idaho. In 1999 the store was sold to the May Company, which eventually became part of Macy’s. In 2002 the ZCMI name was removed from the remaining department stores. R.W. Madsen not only “saved” ZCMI but also the Hotel Utah—where he lived in a three-bedroom seventhfloor apartment—and other businesses during his long career. He was one of the outstanding businessmen and merchandisers of his time.

This cooperative movement is a stepping stone. We say to the people, take advantage of it, it is your privilege. Instead of giving it into the hands of a few individuals to make their hundreds and thousands, let the people, generally, enjoy the benefit arising from the sale of merchandise. . . . You will find that if the people unitedly hearken to the counsel that is given them, it will not be long before the hats, caps, bonnets, boots and shoes, pants, coats, vests and underclothing of this entire community will all be made in our midst.2

W

hat I have in my mind with regard to this co-operative business is this:— There are very few people who cannot get twenty-five dollars to put into one of these co-operative stores. There are hundreds and thousands . . . who, by prudence and industry, can obtain this sum. . . . These co-operative stores are instituted to give the poor a little advantage as well as the rich.1

1 President Brigham Young, April 6, 1869, Journal of Discourses, Volume 12, 375. 2 President Brigham Young, April 7, 1869, Journal of Discourses, Volume 13, 3.

Zions Cooperative Mercantile Institution